Multidisciplinary Primary Care

Doctors of BC supports efforts to enhance multidisciplinary primary care in BC as an important solution to the challenges of the increasing prevalence of chronic disease, the growing needs of an aging population, and the ongoing concerns of patient access to primary care.

The provincial government must ensure the safety of patients, the quality of care, and provider accountability in multidisciplinary care by:

• Requiring that all health professionals practising in a multidisciplinary care setting have appropriate and adequate liability coverage.
• Requiring that all multidisciplinary care teams have a clinical team leader with ultimate responsibility for patient care and who is the best-trained generalist. In the majority of instances, this would be the GP.
• Granting changes to health professionals scopes of practice when such changes are substantiated with sufficient evidence of training and demonstrated expertise; are ethical, appropriate, and consistent with the best available scientific evidence; and protect the quality of care and the safety of patients.

The provincial government must dedicate long-term, sustainable funding and resources to multidisciplinary care initiatives. This includes the removal of financial barriers to incorporating allied care providers within physician offices.

Physician participation in multidisciplinary care initiatives must remain voluntary. Likewise, physicians must be free to discontinue participation in MDC initiatives if and when they so choose.

The provincial government must support the establishment of an IT infrastructure as a critical element of multidisciplinary care with the goal of enabling communication between physicians and allied health professionals.

 For more information, including background, analysis and references, please see the full policy statement.