COVID-19 going forward will sit on the shoulders of primary care doctors and nurses if no new variant emerges, but the way that medical care is delivered must be reconsidered, Ontario’s now-defunct science table said Monday in its final bit of advice to the province.The Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table released three briefs that focused on the response to the pandemic by family doctors and nurses.It found patients who weren’t connected with a family doctor or medical team had worse health outcomes during the pandemic.
It also found primary care teams better responded to the needs of patients than solo practitioners.Other findings included unequal distribution of primary care access throughout the province, a dearth of data on that same care and major overall communication problems.
COVID-19 cases and deaths down in Ontario from week before “We’re seeing huge numbers of people who are unable to access primary care in Ontario, we’ve got a workforce that is exhausted and we need to think differently about the care that we’re going to be providing in the future,” said senior author Dr.
Danielle Martin, a family physician and chair of the department of family and community medicine at the University of Toronto.Public Health Ontario dissolved the independent voluntary science table in early September, with a new group under its watch set to first convene sometime in October.The briefs are the last bit of research the group performed in its role as pandemic-era government advisors.Now, table members hope to share the lessons learned over that time.It says a team-based approach to primary care would better serve patients — and help address the alarming number of Ontario residents without a family doctor.That number.