i) if you have a pre-existing condition that needs attention
ii) if you might quality for treatment (e.g. very weak immune system, over 60, over 50 + certain medical conditions)
iii) you really are not feeling well!
Fun fact: nearly every person in Denmark 🇩🇰 has the name of their GP (or group of GPs) on their healthcard
It's an organized system where 98+% have access to primary care.
How do they do it? One key lies in how GPs are organized. 🧵
(photos of Christian Folsach's practice)
GPs in Denmark are small business owners, similar to family doctors in Canada. They rent or own the office space, hire staff who work in the office, and pay for everything from internet to paper. Most practices in Denmark are small with b/w 1 to 3 GPs working together.
In order to get paid by government for the services they provide, GPs need a supplier number. These supplier numbers are issued by the region based on projected population demand.
How is that >98% of Danes have a GP? Part of the answer lies in their approach to training physicians.
Here's a summary of some of what I've learned on my trip to Denmark 🇩🇰 🧵
(the photo here is a wall of some of the 170+ residents trained at the practice I visited)
After high school, most Danes take a gap year where they typically work and travel (the average is 2 gap years but several take even more). They would then apply and gain admission to medical school which is 6 years in total.
After graduating from medical school, every new doctor does a one year "internship" of sorts, 6 months of which is in a GP practice and the other 6 months in a hospital.
Today we concluded the #OurCare Manitoba Priority Panel, our 5th & final reference panel on primary care in Canada
30 members of the public, randomly selected, spent >30 hrs since the start of Sept, learning, deliberating & coming to consensus on recommendations for better 🧵
These members of the public, roughly represented the demographics of the province — with one exception. We deliberately overrepresented people who identified as First Nations, Métis or Inuit.
They heard from over a dozen experts on primary care on a range of topics from the basics to in-depth sessions on accountability, rural and remote care and tradeoffs
Let's start by going back to fall 2021. Most people had been vaccinated and we thought we were heading out of the pandemic. We were starting to try and clear the backlog of care.
EDs were overcrowded and some people blamed it on family docs.
In the spring, we had just experienced a brutal COVID wave. At that time most of us were appropriately taking a virtual-first approach, seeing patients by phone or video first and then bringing them to the office if needed in an effort to minimize COVID spread.