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Primary health care organizations – through a conceptual and a political lens
Author(s) -
Sturmberg Joachim P.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of evaluation in clinical practice
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.737
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1365-2753
pISSN - 1356-1294
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2753.2011.01671.x
Subject(s) - mindset , health care , health policy , hrhis , international health , public relations , nursing , bureaucracy , health care reform , community health , politics , business , medicine , political science , economic growth , public health , economics , computer science , artificial intelligence , law
Background Governments around the world are looking at means to improve health care services and health outcomes for their communities within a sustainable expenditure framework. There is a general agreement that strengthening primary health care is the way for the future. Primary health care organizations (PHCOs) are seen as a means to achieving more effective and efficient health care. Results and conclusions This paper proposes a complex adaptive framework for PHCOs, taking account of health and illness being subjective experiences, health care being ‘whole person’‐focused, and PHCOs focusing on all of a community's health determinants and community‐based health care needs. Such approach would foster building healthy local communities as much as seamless integration of health services for all. However, despite the expressed intensions towards patient‐centred health care reform the bureaucratic mindset of Australian health policy makers risks true reform by imposing highly structured – rather than ‘simple’– policy and operational rules.