Primary care is not new

Over 100 years ago it emerged with the publication of the UK’s “Dawson Report”. It was introduced to address health inequalities and to simplify healthcare delivery. Today, primary care delivers the following:

1.      Providing first contact of care for new health problems

2.      Comprehensive care for most health problems

3.      Continuity of care

4.      Long-term person-focused care

5.      Care coordination.

There are significant healthcare cost savings in preventing expensive illness. But furthermore, primary care reduces use of secondary care and reduce overall health costs. Compared with subspecialists, primary care physicians use fewer resources (hospitalizations, prescriptions and tests and procedures). On hospitalizations it can reduce total hospitalizations, avoidable hospitalizations, hospital readmissions and the use of ER. Primary care improves health outcomes, in particular of the following:

·        Major diseases (cancer, heart disease, stroke)

·        Maternal, neonatal and child

·        Mental health (anxiety, depression, suicide)

What is new(ish) is our ability to delivery primary care over digital channels and tools allowing increased convenience and access, remote tracking and monitoring, medical record keeping and of course, insights from data analytics driving targeted interventions.