Politics and Professions: Interdisciplinary Team Models and Their Implications for Health Equity in Ontario

Abstract

Ontario’s efforts to reform primary care through interdisciplinary primary care teams are unprecedented in Canada. Since 2004, the provincial government has focused its reform efforts on three models: Family Health Teams (FHTs), Community Health Centres (CHCs), and Nurse Practitioner-led Clinics (NPLCs). These models vary by team structure, funding, and governance. I examine the strong preference for the FHT model by the government and medical profession, and the implications of this preference on health equity. The opportunity for teams to increase health equity in Ontario may be limited due to the preference for physician-centered FHTs over more egalitarian team models.

Keywords

primary care reform interdisciplinary teams Ontario situational analysis health equity interprofessional teams

In 1978, the Alma Ata Declaration condemned health status disparities between and within nations and defined the tenets of primary health care, including a statement that primary health care relies on “… health workers … to work as a health team and to respond to the expressed health needs of the community.”¹ Since then, primary care reform and provision of primary health care from interdisciplinary teams has become a priority in many nations across the world. However, it was not until 2000 that Canada made primary care teams an official policy priority. Two First Ministers’ Health Accords produced in 2003 and 2004, based on First Ministers’ meetings in 2000 and 2004, respectively, promised that Canadians would receive the “most appropriate care, by the most appropriate providers, in the most appropriate settings”² and that by 2011 “50 percent of Canadians would have access to a multidisciplinary team of health providers, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”³ These promises were backed with considerable financial investment: between 2000 and 2006, $800 million was invested in a Primary Health Care Transition Fund to help jurisdictions innovate in primary care delivery, including interdisciplinary primary care teams. These commitments set the general direction and impetuses for reforming the health care system; but, as health care provision is a provincial responsibility in Canada, the methods for achieving these goals were left to the provinces to decide and implement. Ontario’s efforts to restructure health care delivery systems toward interdisciplinary primary care teams since the early 2000s have been among the most comprehensive in Canada. Ontario is one of only three provinces that has made significant strides toward fulfilling the federal promise made in 2004 of widespread access to an interdisciplinary team.⁴ Ontario’s success in this regard may be due in part to its longstanding interest and investment in various forms of primary care entities.

Governments formed by each of Ontario’s three main political parties have made such investments, reflecting the universal appeal of the concept of teams throughout the province’s recent history. Early investments were experimental. In the early 1980s, on the recommendation of the Task Force to Review Primary Health Care, the Progressive Conservative government expanded on two distinct experimental models of interdisciplinary primary care teams: Community Health Centres (CHCs) and Health Service Organizations (HSOs).⁵ The CHC model featured community-based governance, annual global funding from the provincial government, and salaries for all members of the team, including physicians (ibid.). In contrast, HSOs were largely governed by physicians and funded via capitation (ibid.). The subsequent Liberal government, in power from 1985 to 1990, also expanded the number of CHCs and HSOs, seeking to double the number of each type.⁶

Starting in the 1990s, however, strategies for implementing primary care entities appeared to take on more partisan approaches. From 1990 to 1995, the left-leaning New Democratic Party invested heavily in CHCs while freezing funding to HSOs,^5,7 shifting the emphasis to community-governed and community-owned models. When the right-leaning Progressive Conservatives formed the next government from 1995 to 2003, they invested in physician-governed group practice models (the capitation-based Family Health Network and the fee-for-service-based Family Health Group) that provided extended hours of care and nursing support; on the whole, these were not interdisciplinary beyond the medical and nursing professions. In 1996 the Progressive Conservatives froze funding to new CHCs, cut the budget of extant CHCs by 5%, eliminated funding to the Association of Community Health Centres, and initiated a review into the cost efficiency of this model.⁷ The net result was a decided shift away from community-governed models and toward physician-governed and physician-owned models.

Since taking power in 2004, the centrist Liberal government has taken a multipronged approach to primary care reform, investing in three distinct models of interdisciplinary primary care teams: Family Health Teams (FHTs), Community Health Centres (CHCs), and Nurse Practitioner–led Clinics (NPLCs). These models vary in terms of team structure, funding structure, and governance, reflecting a more comprehensive and flexible approach compared to the two previous governments. These models form the focus of the remainder of the article.

This article draws on my PhD project, which critically examined the development of interdisciplinary teams from 2004 to 2011 to study the implications of the proliferation of the largely physician-dominated FHT model relative to the CHC and NPLC models and the possible negative effects of this proliferation on health equity issues in Ontario and beyond. I focus not on health equity outcomes but rather on the commitments made to team models and the discourses surrounding these. My findings suggest that the preference for the FHT model by the Liberal provincial government and the medical profession, the neutrality of other health professions toward team models, and the lack of public awareness about the differences between team models all serve to marginalize models that may be better suited to address issues of health equity. This article makes a unique contribution to the growing literature on team structure and equity by focusing on how models better suited to health equity are marginalized, both in action and in discourse, against the largely physician-centered FHT model in the political context of Ontario. By understanding the mechanics of how marginalization occurred here, those interested in promoting health equity through teams in other jurisdictions can take measures to prevent or challenge such marginalization.

Health Equity

Health equity is understood as the absence of preventable, unfair, or unjust disparities between social groups^8–10 in terms of health status or outcomes,^9–11access to health services,^10,11 or the social determinants that ultimately affect health.^10,12 Reviews of research studies done in Canada suggest that inequities in health status and access to health services continue to exist, even after the implementation of Medicare, which eliminated the financial barrier to accessing medically necessary services.^13–15 In terms of access to health services, recent studies have shown that after adjusting for health needs, people with lower income have a lower rate of initial contact with physicians.^13,16 These studies also showed that, once an initial contact is made, people with lower income and lower education levels use physician services at a higher rate, suggesting that they enter the system later in the progression of ill health.¹³ Curtis and MacMinn¹³ also found that recent immigrants have very low rates of physician contact. Available evidence shows that the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged groups in Canada in terms of health status¹⁷ and access¹³ continues to widen, making it vital to continue to pay attention to issues of equity in health care.

Interdisciplinary Primary Care Team Literature in Canada

The past decade has seen significant growth in Canadian research literature about interdisciplinary primary care teams, a testament to their perceived importance in the attempt to reform primary care services in Canada. For the most part, however, the research does not specifically address issues related directly to health equity. While improved health outcomes^18–20 and improved access to primary care overall²¹ are discussed in this particular body of literature as goals or as anticipated benefits of such teams, these goals tend to refer to the Canadian population generically rather than specifically addressing access-challenged groups.

Instead, studies about interdisciplinary primary care teams focus on other issues. Some focus on the broad conception, design, implementation, and function of teams.^20,22 Others focus on identifying barriers to the creation or function of teams, such as legal or legislative impediments,²³ the insular nature of professions,^{19,21,24–26} turf battles,^21,22,26,27 unfamiliarity with other professionals’ abilities and roles,^27,28 the need for better communication between team members,²⁷ and the need for more respect and appreciation of the abilities of other professions.²⁸ Some attention has also been directed to improving team functionality^22,29–33 and to measurement and evaluation of the efficacy of such teams.^24,34–37

Some studies also focus on the problem of getting physicians to “buy into” practicing in interdisciplinary primary care teams. Muldoon and colleagues³⁶ assert that the CHC model of interdisciplinary primary care never took hold in Ontario due to physicians’ strong fear of being paid by salary (a perceived loss of financial autonomy). Recent policy literature has stressed the need for, or the success of, “flexibility,” “innovation,” and the “voluntary participation of physicians” in designing and implementing interdisciplinary primary care teams, so that physicians will find the conversion from the tradition in Canada of a solo, fee-for-service style of practice to interdisciplinary care teams more appealing, while also addressing policymakers’ ever-present concern with the need for cost efficiency.^4,35,36,38 This generally entails payment structures that serve the needs of both of these concerns, such as capitation or systems that blend capitation with salary or fee-for-service. In sum, literature about teams is mainly focused on issues other than equity, and the literature on health equity has not yet empirically examined how political processes shape health equity.

Health Care Services and Team Models That Support Equity

Increasingly, literature suggests community involvement or community governance and ownership of health facilities may improve access to health services and health outcomes. Some authors have only speculated broadly on this connection.^39,40 Others have made empirical links. Crampton and colleagues⁴¹ found that, compared to physician-owned (for-profit) entities, community-governed (nonprofit) entities reduced both cultural and financial barriers to access for minority populations in New Zealand and were more likely to conduct needs assessments of the communities served. The authors caution that more empirical research is needed to determine the exact effect of community governance versus the effect of nonprofit status (ibid). In their study of the effects of the Aboriginal Health National Partnership Agreements (AHNPA), Kelaher and colleagues⁴² found that increased participation by Aboriginal community members in this initiative led to increased uptake of health assessments. A study by Lavoie and colleagues⁴³ determined that health outcomes of members of an Aboriginal community in Manitoba, Canada, improved markedly after switching to a model of community control over health services.

Ontario-specific studies comparing various primary care models featuring interdisciplinary teams have shown that the CHC model (where community governance is standard) outperforms others in areas related to health equity. Muldoon and colleagues⁴⁴ compared the CHC model to three physician-governed models (Family Health Group, Family Health Network, and fee-for-service) on performance in community outreach activities (such as home visits, soliciting opinions of clients, networking or involvement with ethnic, cultural, religious, or community groups) and assessed each on community orientation (the care providers’ knowledge of the health needs of the communities served). CHCs scored highest on measures of both community outreach activities and community orientation (ibid.). Though the physician-governed models rated themselves as “fairly community oriented,” the authors contend that these models in fact did poorly in these aspects of practice.

Russell and colleagues⁴⁵ found that CHCs outperformed four models of physician-governed practice models in chronic disease management, an important finding for equity due to the higher prevalence of chronic diseases among those in poverty.^11,46 Glazier and colleagues⁴⁷ found that, compared to Family Health Networks, Family Health Groups, and Family Health Organizations (all physician-governed models), CHCs were the most likely to serve disadvantaged and sicker populations, yet they had lower-than-expected rates of emergency department visits among their users. However, both Muldoon and colleagues⁴⁴ and Glazier and colleagues⁴⁷ caution that their methodologies did not allow them to pinpoint which feature, or combination of features, of the CHC model (e.g., community governance, community outreach, longer contact time, tenure of interdisciplinary team) allowed for these outcomes. So, while it is known that models featuring community governance in Ontario are associated with better equity-related outcomes, more study is needed to disentangle the effect of each possible feature.

Finally, a five-year evaluation of FHTs, CHCs, and Family Health Groups published by the Conference Board of Canada⁴⁸ showed that CHCs slightly outperformed FHTs and Family Health Groups in all areas of comparison (most of them equity-related): access, prevention and promotion, patient- and family-centeredness, patient support for chronic disease management, and overall patient experience.

Theoretical and Methodological Framework

This article is based on key findings relating to equity issues that emerged in my PhD research project, a critical examination of the development of interdisciplinary primary care teams in Ontario from 2004 to 2011. My work draws on assumptions and techniques of situational analysis, a theoretical and methodological approach developed by Adele Clarke⁴⁹ for analyzing complex social situations. This approach combines grounded theory’s reliance on empirical data to identify basic social processes; social worlds analysis’s attention to identifying collective actors and their commitments to action; arena analysis’s focus on debate and negotiation among social worlds regarding a particular issue; postmodern concerns to account for the influence of discourse and history; and feminist postmodernists’ concern with marginalized voices (ibid). I chose this framework over other available frameworks specifically for its flexibility. It does not preconceive any one group as the centerpiece of the analysis, in contrast to frameworks such as medical dominance,^50,51 where analysis focuses on the medical profession and other groups necessarily in relation to medicine, or the system of professions,⁵² where professions are the central analytical focus and other groups are peripheral. Situational analysis allowed exploration of multiple types of groups and the relationships between them on their own terms and allowed me to make the development of teams the primary concern.

My work here focuses on the commitments, actions, and discourse of the provincial government and health professions toward interdisciplinary primary care teams. The provincial government consists of the ruling centrist Liberal party and two opposition parties: the center-left New Democratic Party and the center-right Progressive Conservatives. Four health professions were chosen strategically for my PhD study: (1) family medicine, because it was the branch of medicine most affected by the movement toward interdisciplinary teams, given the longstanding tradition in Canada of solo practice by this segment of the profession; (2) advanced practice nursing (nurse practitioners), because of their longstanding struggle to be recognized as primary care providers in the province; (3) dietetics, because it was one of the first professions to be integrated into FHTs; and (4) chiropractic, because of its recent participation in FHTs. I also discuss the limited data available from my study regarding the public view of such teams. These groups make up the social worlds in my analysis, and the debates about interdisciplinary primary care teams among these groups are the arena.

Data sources include both textual sources and interviews. Textual data comes from legislative debates, legislative committee meetings, policy documents, and website content of the provincial government, professional associations, regulatory colleges, and the Association of Family Health Teams of Ontario and the Association of Health Centres of Ontario, the umbrella organizations representing the interests of FHTs and CHCs, respectively. NPLCs do not have their own support organization; some have joined the Association of Ontario Health Centres, and others have joined the Association of Family Health Teams of Ontario. Interviews were conducted with 15 individuals representing the health professional, political, and public social worlds in Ontario to ascertain collective views and stances toward interdisciplinary primary care teams. As interviews were conducted by telephone, participants provided their informed consent verbally. Ethics clearance was granted by the Dalhousie University Ethics Review Board (Project # 2010-2299). Data were coded and analyzed with the assistance of MAXQDA.

Data analysis was informed by the tenets of situational analysis outlined above. Data were coded for basic information situating interdisciplinary team-based care in Ontario historically to account for postmodern concern with historical context. Along the lines of social worlds and arena analysis, and also accounting for postmodern concerns with how discourses shape what is possible to know or think about a given topic, data were coded for how government and health professional groups orient themselves toward, take action toward, and commit themselves to interdisciplinary team-based care; and for how discourses about interdisciplinary care are used by each group to discuss and debate interdisciplinary team-based care and other groups’ involvement in this phenomenon.

Discourses were identified through commonly used techniques, including watching for variations in the descriptions, definitions, and meanings assigned to interdisciplinary primary care teams⁵³; claims to truth, objectivity, and common sense^53,54; and instances of contradiction or inconsistency, as these are often evidence that multiple and competing discourses are at work in one site.⁴⁹ Finally, I also took note of which groups or actors were talked about but not actively involved in the situation, accounting for feminist concerns with silent or marginalized voices.

Models of Focus

Since coming to power in 2004, the Liberal administration invested in three main models of interdisciplinary primary care teams: Family Health Teams (FHTs), Community Health Centres (CHCs), and Nurse Practitioner–led Clinics (NPLCs). First created in 2004, FHTs are interdisciplinary primary care teams founded on one of three forms of physician group practice: Family Health Networks, in which physicians are paid on a capitation basis; Family Health Organizations, also a capitation model; or Family Health Groups, where physicians are paid on a fee-for-service basis. Other members of the interdisciplinary team (which may include a mix of nurses, nurse practitioners, dietitians, pharmacists, psychologists, social workers, and occupational therapists) may be paid by salary or sessional payments. Generally, physicians are seen as leaders of the clinical team, with members of the interdisciplinary team supporting the physician in the care of patients.³⁷ FHTs follow one of three governance structures, chosen when applying for FHT status: physician-led, community-led (known as cFHTs), or mixed, consisting of both physicians and community members on the governing board. While specific numbers are known only for the community-led model, literature suggests that the most common governance model is physician-led,³⁷and the least common is community-led (27 of the 200).⁵⁵ In the FHT model, patients are seen as “belonging” to a particular physician within the FHT or to the group of physicians, rather than to the entity as a whole.

CHCs have existed in Ontario since the 1970s.^5,36 Like FHTs, they consist of a variety of health professions and commonly include a mix of physicians, nurses, and nurse practitioners, dietitians, health promoters, social workers, and counselors.⁵⁶ All members of the team, including physicians, are paid by salary and considered employees of the entity, creating a greater sense of egalitarianism between the health professions than in other multidisciplinary settings.⁵ Physicians may work with patients directly or act as consultants for nurse practitioners providing care to patients when issues fall outside the nurse practitioner’s legal scope of practice. All CHCs are required to be community governed, with ordinary members of the community and users of the service sitting on the governing board.^5,39 The board determines the needs of the community and the programs to address them. Users of the service are seen as belonging to the CHC as a whole, rather than belonging to any particular care provider in the entity.

NPLCs were first created in 2007. In these entities, nurse practitioners are the clinical leaders of the interdisciplinary team, which may consist of physicians, registered nurses, social workers, pharmacists, dieticians, mental health workers, occupational therapists, or physiotherapists.⁵⁷ The physician role in NPLCs is to act as consultant for issues outside of the scope of practice of nurse practitioners (Interviewee 003), and by law, NPLCs must have physicians as part of the team.⁵⁸ Like CHCs, all providers in NPLCs, including physicians, are paid by salary (ibid.). Depending on their health needs, patients may access any of these providers directly.⁵⁷ Governance boards consist of 50% nurse practitioners and 50% community members (Interviewee 003).

Findings: Political Social World

Provincial Government and Opposition MPPs

Family Health Teams as the Liberals' signature on primary care reform

While the Liberal administration took a multipronged approach to primary care reform, the level of investment in and commitment to each model of team was unequally divided, with FHTs the clearly favored model. Of the three models of interdisciplinary primary care team, FHTs received the most money ($600 million),⁵⁹ versus CHCs (an investment of $95 million between 2005 and 2008,⁶⁰ bringing total spending on CHCs up to $300 million)⁶¹ and NPLCs ($38 million).⁶² FHTs are also the most numerous compared to the other models, with a total of 200 new FHTs being established since 2004,⁶³ versus an expansion of 21 CHCs and 28 CHC satellites (though this expansion is the single largest expansion of CHCs in Ontario’s history)⁶⁴ and 25 NPLCs.⁶⁵

The Liberal administration’s commitment to FHTs as their flagship investment in primary care reform is also evident in the way they talk about them. In 2004, then health minister George Smitherman announced FHTs as the “cornerstone” of the Liberals’ plan to build “strong community-based care.”⁶⁶ Similarly, he and other Liberal MPPs referred to FHTs as the Liberals’ “signature piece” or “signature investment”^67–69 in primary care reform and as “our model”^70,71 of primary care reform, clearly demarcating FHTs as the Liberals’ special brand of interdisciplinary primary care team.

Who is determining community needs? Liberals often promoted FHTs in the legislative assembly as being designed specifically to meet community needs. At times, however, it is difficult to determine exactly who is determining community needs, as in this claim by then health minister George Smitherman:

Our family health team proposal provides the opportunity for health care providers to come together and offer an array of services that meet the needs of those populations. That means that if those populations dictate that optometry, physiotherapy or chiropractic are their priorities, they’ll be able to work those into their family health teams.⁷²

It is unclear whether the populations themselves are dictating (as in “expressing”) their health needs, which can then be met by the providers in question, or if it is the health condition of the population that is “dictating” the needs, guiding the health providers to choose the composition of the team. The previous statement referring to health providers coming together to offer an array of services, in contrast, seems to suggest it is the health providers deciding and subsequently offering an array of services. The following, however, suggests health providers are deciding what the community’s needs are: “Our model [FHTs] will bring health practitioners of a variety of sorts together so that there is a team environment working on behalf of the patients in that area.”⁷¹ Liberal MPP Pat Hoy added to the confusion (on the same day): “Across my riding, family health teams are being designed for communities and by communities.”⁷³ Interestingly, this ambiguity about who ultimately determines a community’s health needs was never clarified by explaining in legislature that multiple governance forms were possible.

The New Democratic Party (NDP) questioned whether communities would have the option of community governance, as in the CHC model, and claimed it was this form of governance that was best suited to determine community needs:

I wonder if the family health teams that the government is going to put in place will have community-run, local boards. That is key to the effective running of community health centres. We know that local control means that boards can respond effectively and in a timely fashion to the needs that come from the community. Those needs can be very diverse, can be very different, can be linguistic needs that need to be responded to, can be the needs of very difficult populations that people have to respond to—HIV/AIDS clients, for example. Community boards can do that, and it will be interesting to see if the government will use what has been an effective strategy from CHCs and implement those with the family health teams.⁷⁴

Unfortunately, the minister did not answer the question because the question was not asked in the question period. However, to the best of my knowledge, in my sample of 209 instances of legislative debate, members of the Liberal party did not distinguish between FHT governance types in legislature.

The concern of the NDP with community-based boards reflects its social democratic approach to health care policy; as noted earlier, during their tenure as the provincial government from 1990 to 1995, the NDP focused its health reform efforts on increasing the number of CHCs (where community-governed boards are the norm), while freezing funding for Health Service Organizations, which were physician-owned interdisciplinary teams based on a capitation model.^5,7 The reticence of the Liberals to openly acknowledge or discuss the variety of governance forms, particularly community-based FHTs, suggests a different strategy to governance of interdisciplinary primary care teams, one seemingly more focused on flexibility in ownership models, and less concerned with community ownership of interdisciplinary primary care teams. The Progressive Conservatives did not discuss issues relating to governance structures of FHTs.

Overwriting CHCs with FHTs?

My data suggest instances of the Liberal government overwriting the CHC model, both in a literal sense and a discursive sense. In a literal sense, this entailed an offer by health minister George Smitherman in 2004 to give communities that had specifically applied for a CHC to receive FHTs instead:

The challenge we face, of course, is that 140 or so communities in Ontario are underserviced from the standpoint of physicians. There are about 100 communities or so that have made application for either an expansion of their existing CHCs in the form of satellites or for new community health centres. I cannot confirm for the honourable member that Sudbury will be on that list, but what I can tell the honourable member is that our commitment around family health teams will see the first 45 family health teams launched in fiscal year 2004–05, and that what we are seeking to do in the first class of applicants, if you will, is to reach out to those communities that have made application for community health centres, because we really want to, in a certain sense, reward the community effort that's gone into the development of those proposals. So I do think there is hopeful news out there for communities that have long been waiting for more access to primary care at the community level.⁷⁵

The offer was made a second time a few weeks later:

First and foremost, because so many communities in Ontario have asked to be considered for community health centres … we’re going to make those communities that desire community health centres our first priority for expansion of family health teams. They’ve invested a considerable amount of community effort in the work to prepare so far, and we’re going to take advantage of that community effort and seek to make sure we have success in that area.⁷¹

Unfortunately, I have been unable to determine whether this substitution of FHTs for CHCs ever happened. Nonetheless, with more than 100 communities expressing need, and only 45 FHTs in the first year of implementation available, some communities undoubtedly did not have their desire for an interdisciplinary primary care team of any description met that year.

In a more discursive sense of overwrite, Minister Smitherman, in replying to NDP leader Howard Hampton’s criticism that FHTs were essentially the same as Family Health Networks established by the Progressive Conservatives in the early 2000s, attempted to make FHTs seem conceptually very similar to CHCs, by promoting their interdisciplinary structure and claiming a common “ideology”:

The honourable member obviously has a difficult time grasping that family health teams find their ideological roots in the community health centre movement … and that community health centres have helped to inform family health teams, which will be interdisciplinary.⁷⁶

It is noteworthy that the minister chose to emphasize interdisciplinarity as the commonality between the two models and that community governance, the hallmark feature of a CHC born of the leftist and feminist social movements of the 1960s,⁵ is not the “ideological root” emphasized in this comparison. FHTs are also described by the minister as having “core values very similar to community health centres”⁷⁷and that FHTs “find their roots in the interdisciplinary way that community health centres operate.”⁷⁸

Findings: Professional Social World

Medicine

My data suggest that, of the three models of interdisciplinary primary care teams discussed in this paper, the FHT is the most favored in the medical social world in Ontario. An examination of discourses related to interdisciplinary primary care teams from this social world’s perspective will illustrate my arrival at this conclusion. Starting in the early 2000s, discourses from the medical social world addressing interdisciplinary primary care teams paint a very particular version of team, examined below.

Physicians as de facto team leaders

Policy documents written by physician organizations in Ontario posit physicians as the natural clinical leaders of interdisciplinary teams. The Ontario Medical Association (OMA) links this natural role to the knowledge base of physicians compared to other health care professionals: “The OMA believes that the physician, having greater breadth of training and larger scope of practice, should be the clinical lead in interprofessional teams.”⁷⁹

Similarly, regarding the topic of interdisciplinary primary care teams, the Ontario College of Family Physicians (OCFP) stated:

While the various regulated health professionals have specialized/narrower scopes of practice, it must be acknowledged that family physicians have the broadest scope of practice, which often places them in a clinical leadership role … Supporting various disciplines to work towards their full scope of practice or towards an increased scope of practice is a minor secondary goal. Safety and quality of patient care should always be our first consideration. That goal is best met in a model of interdependent care that builds in family practices in particular, on the knowledge and skills of the family doctor …⁸⁰

These references to physicians as the natural leaders of teams serve to keep an already well-established hierarchy in the health profession intact in team settings, particularly in making appeals to patient safety. Excluding other professions from team leadership or independent practice within a team setting sets the tone with these two organizations for what kinds of team would be acceptable to them. The CHC and NPLC models, with independent nurse practitioners, would not fit this requirement.

Maintaining and enforcing the primacy of the physician-patient relationship

Another argument often presented by physician organizations when discussing interdisciplinary primary care teams is that teams should be implemented in a manner that does not disrupt the “trusting relationship” between physicians and their patients. The OCFP asserts that:

Patients greatly appreciate the team approach to care, but efforts need to be made to ensure that team approaches do not interfere with the patient-physician relationship. Trust is not built in a day. Trust develops from encounters over the course of time and will be less likely to develop in a system that triages only the sickest patients to the Family Doctor … collaborative/shared-care models need to be developed as the focus of care delivery between Family Doctors and team members, and between Family Doctors and their Specialist colleagues.⁸¹

Similarly, the OMA outlines its recommendation for keeping the physician-patient relationship as central in all primary care models:

In the North American context, significant evidence demonstrates that a strong patient-physician relationship and primary care system improves the management of health and disease … Given its demonstrable benefits, the patient-physician relationship should continue to form the foundation of our health-care system, and every patient should have the opportunity to benefit from entering into such a relationship … patient-physician relationship must remain central within every primary care model and the role of the physician as the co-ordinator of care must be supported and promoted within the healthcare system.⁸²

Again, this view clearly precludes the CHC and NPLC models.

In its vision of interdisciplinary primary care teams, the OMA even suggests what amounts to a forced relationship between patients and physicians in an attempt to control rostering. In its current policy paper on interprofessional care, the OMA asserts that “… in interprofessional care teams that involve patient enrolled models of care … [t]he physician or physician group should be the only health-care providers to whom patients roster.”⁷⁹ This statement is attempting to set a tone for capitation models, positioning physicians as the only mechanism through which users may obtain access to an interdisciplinary team. Given that governments have historically found capitation models (which rely on patient rostering to calculate funding for health services) appealing for their cost effectiveness,⁵ government acquiescence to this demand, if it has not already happened, could severely limit patient choice of provider in physician-based models of interdisciplinary care.

Speaking out against “physician substitution” models

Physician organizations in Ontario have also directly spoken out against models of teams that allow other practitioners to see patients with no physician consultation. Referred to as “physician substitution” models, they are posited as antithetical to the “true” nature of collaboration:

With all due respect to our nursing colleagues, the Nurse-led Clinic model is the exact opposite of the collaborative practice model envisioned by government when it created FHTs.⁸³

The OMA’s critique outlines its concerns about NPLCs from the perspective of physicians, while also showing its strong support for the FHT model:

The Ontario Medical Association (OMA) is very pleased with today’s announcement by Health Minister David Caplan to move ahead with additional Family Health Teams (FHTs). However, the OMA is disappointed the government plans to also move ahead with independent Nurse Practitioner Clinics. “At a time when health profession resources are stretched thin, it is puzzling why the government would create competition within the health care system for these resources rather than promoting collaboration,” said Dr. Ken Arnold, President of the OMA. “Family Health Teams are a highly effective and tested collaborative care model that provides a comprehensive level of care to patients” … By comparison, independent nurse practitioner clinics run directly counter to these integrated care models.⁸⁴

NPLCs are seen as an untested, ineffective, and uncollaborative model (despite being interdisciplinary teams since their inception and including physicians by law). No similar statements regarding CHCs were found in the physician data. However, a reference is made to the effect that CHCs are too expensive a model to implement on a widespread basis.⁸⁵ There seems little room in the official discourse of the medical social world for any model of interdisciplinary primary care team except for a physician-based one.

Nursing

In contrast to the data for government and medicine, the nursing social world data shows no endorsement of any one model of interdisciplinary primary care team to the exclusion of others, despite the striking accomplishment of establishing NPLCs. NPLCs are justified in terms of their ability to fill a need for health care where other options are limited and contain reassurances against physician substitution:

Nurse practitioners are highly skilled nurses with additional education who do not envision their role as physician replacements. While physician shortages may have been part of the rationale for implementing the role, the vision for the future of the role is to fill gaps in meeting the evolving health care needs for the citizens of Ontario. One of the key roles that nurse practitioners can play is to offer an additional point of entry into the health care system as an effective clinical care provider.⁸⁶

However, there are references to the ways that NPLCs, with their operational philosophy rooted in nursing theory, are especially suited to working closely with communities to determine health needs: “… nurse practitioners are experts in community health care needs assessment and program planning, implementation, and evaluation. These programs are targeted to specific health care needs identified in collaboration with their communities.”⁵⁷

Other Health Professions

As with nursing, data for two other professions in my study, chiropractic and dietetics, did not suggest in any way that any one model of interdisciplinary primary care team is favored over another, nor is any model disparaged. Interview and textual data for each of these professions revealed their members work in CHCs, FHTs, and, in the case of dietitians, in NPLCs; an interviewee from the chiropractic social world (Interviewee 005) stated that chiropractors and NPLCs were in discussions about chiropractors working in NPLCs. Further, interviewees from both the Ontario Chiropractic Association and Dietitians of Canada confirmed their respective associations were supportive of all forms of interdisciplinary teams.

Findings: The Public Social World

While literature and data regarding the perspectives of government, health professions, and policy experts about teams were plentiful, obtaining a sense of the view of the Ontario public’s perspective was much more difficult. Little literature dealt with the public perspective of primary care reform in Ontario, and I could locate none about their views of interdisciplinary primary care teams. Unfortunately, my attempts to gain entrée into the CHC social world to learn more about members of the public being involved in CHC governance were unsuccessful. In addition to these challenges, my search for textual data from three organizations that seemed promising, the Ontario Health Quality Council (OHQC), the Health Professions Review Advisory Committee (HPRAC), and the Ontario Health Coalition, did not have any discussion of interdisciplinary primary care teams.

Nonetheless, I attempted to learn more about the Ontario public’s perspective using my extant data. I looked for and noted evidence of public participation or consultation in the textual data I collected. Whenever possible, I asked interview participants about what they perceived to be the public knowledge and views of interdisciplinary primary care teams and conducted an interview with a key informant from one of Ontario’s 15 health coalitions. While my data regarding this social world is limited, some of my observations are relevant here.

On balance, both my textual and interview data suggest that the broader Ontario public is largely uninformed about primary care reform and interdisciplinary primary care teams and largely uninvolved in developing policies around these. The legislative debates or committee meeting minutes I reviewed for this project showed no indication of a broad public consultation about any of the Liberal government’s initiatives toward teams. A subsequent search of the Government of Ontario website for evidence of public consultation showed results for several health-related topics (such as northern health, health technology, Chinese medicine, to name just a few) but not teams. This is not to say definitively that public consultation did not happen, but rather that my data and searches did not indicate any public consultation.

Much stronger evidence in my textual data indicates that particular communities are involved in the setup of FHTs, especially in the very early phases of the government’s plan to implement them, but largely on an invitation basis. In addition to the data presented earlier about the government giving “first crack” to communities that had applied for CHCs, information from the first in a series of six FHT bulletins published by the government between 2004 and 2007 suggest that the first information sessions ever held about FHTs were targeted to 15 communities (not named) that had expressed interest in FHTs.⁸⁷ It is unclear how those first 15 had received information about FHTs or whether any more than 15 had expressed an interest. However, by the release of the next bulletin in just over four months, 213 communities had applied for a FHT.⁸⁸ While this community-level interest is impressive, it does not represent a broad consultation with the Ontario public about teams before investing the majority of resources into one particular model.

My interview data also suggest the broader public is uninformed about interdisciplinary primary care teams in Ontario. One participant attributed this to the design of primary care teams being largely in the hands of elites:

[SH]: … has the movement toward interdisciplinary primary care teams been an issue of importance, do you think, to the general public, and what were the indicators of that, if that was the case?

[Interviewee 014]: No, I don’t—unfortunately, I don't think it is an interest to the general public—I don't think it’s, um, it hasn’t sort of jumped the wall between the kind of chattering class of the policy elites, and the general public.

The same participant asserted:

… family health teams were kind of just announced by the government, they probably were in the works in the bureaucracy for quite some time, but they didn't consult on them, and then there was no—you know, they weren’t created by some popular movement or anything, they came out of the bureaucracy (Interviewee 014).

Other interview participants (Interviewees 002 and 009) indicated that, in their experiences, public knowledge and interest in interdisciplinary primary care teams in Ontario was low, but they asserted that with time, awareness would increase. Only one respondent, Interviewee 003, noted that interest in interdisciplinary primary care teams (specifically, a NPLC) was high in a community she once worked in and attributed this to the community being small, isolated, and lacking health care services.

Discussion and Conclusion: Implications for Equity Issues

The preferential resourcing and emphasis on FHTs by the provincial government over other models, the clear preference of FHTs over other models of interdisciplinary primary care teams by physicians, the neutrality of other professional groups toward the variety of interdisciplinary primary care teams by other health professions, and apparent lack of knowledge or input into the idea of interdisciplinary primary care teams by the general public in Ontario are all conditions with potentially negative effects for achieving greater health equity in that province and in other provinces in Canada via interdisciplinary teams.

Most obvious for the province of Ontario is that fewer material resources have gone to team models (such as CHCs) that come standard-equipped with features long associated with models highly successful in reducing inequity of access, such as a stated mandate to reduce inequities,⁸⁹ community governance, a strong community orientation and focus, a more egalitarian team structure, and no requirement to roster. Instead, the bulk of material resources were directed toward physician-based models without a clear mandate to reduce inequities, with no requirement for community governance, with a less egalitarian team structure, and with the requirement for patients to roster themselves to a physician or physician group (rostering may be challenging for transient populations, for example, which may be more common among low income groups). The distribution of material resources as they stand in Ontario currently means that equity of access, and provision of care designed to help those with more health issues due to their social characteristics, may not have improved as much as it might have with more investment in models better equipped to deal with issues of inequity.

Other provinces in Canada considering reforming their primary care system might look to Ontario as an example. Despite the evidence of the longstanding efficacy of the CHC model, particularly in terms of issues related to health equity, there is still a chance that FHTs will still be seen as “the” model to implement widely in other provinces, given that governments find capitation models attractive for cost savings.⁴⁷

Certainly, the data in this study suggest that the professions’ interests are supported by the expansion of teams as implemented by the provincial government. The strong approval of the FHT model (and the clear rejection of other forms of interdisciplinary primary care teams) among medical leaders in Ontario might make it an easy sell to physicians in other provinces. My data have further shown the neutrality of other health professions toward the variety of team models. This neutrality may in part be the result of professional self-interest. The sizeable expansion of all team models in Ontario has given nurse practitioners, dietitians, and chiropractors unprecedented opportunities. For the nurse practitioner and dietetic professions, the expansion provides many new work opportunities and provided the opportunity to lobby the provincial government for expansions in their respective scopes of practice, some of which were granted in the passing of Bill 179, the Regulated Health Professions Statute Law Amendment Act, in 2009.⁹⁰ For chiropractors, the movement toward interdisciplinary teams provides the impetus to work with medicine, a profession with which it had long experienced tension in Ontario.⁹¹ Further, working in these models alongside physicians supports their legitimization project.⁹² Finally, my work shows a lack of broad public input into these teams. If these patterns occur in other provinces as well, the lack of critique from other health professions, and lack of input from the public may make the preference for physician-based models like FHTs by government and physicians go unquestioned.

Even before the Liberal government’s expansion of CHCs in 2004, Ontario, with 58 CHCs,⁴⁷ had the most CHCs of any province in Canada. In other provinces where the CHC model is less prominent to begin with, it is possible that the attention currently focused on physician-based models may overshadow CHCs being seen as an option. Indeed, given that Ontario’s health minister saw FHTs as acceptable substitutes for requests for CHCs, this type of overwrite could easily happen in other provinces anxious to implement interdisciplinary primary care teams as part of their health reform goals. Indeed, this type of overwrite has happened in at least one other nation, New Zealand, where primary health organizations (nonprofit, community-governed entities) were encouraged to merge with larger entities to form integrated family health centers, which are not focused on community responsiveness.⁹³

A conceptual distinction has been made between two types of equity: horizontal and vertical. Horizontal equity refers to “the principle that individuals with the same level of need should receive the same level of services.”⁹⁴ Vertical equity refers to “the principle that greater attention should be directed towards individuals with greater need (ibid.).” The current emphasis in literature on making interdisciplinary teams work in physician-based settings to maximize exposure of mainstream populations to the anticipated benefits of interdisciplinary teams (i.e., a greater concern with horizontal equity) has drawn attention away from studying issues more relevant to vertical health equity with regard to teams, such as determining the effects of various team structures, governance structures, or rostering requirements on users’ perceptions or willingness to use various models of interdisciplinary primary care teams. Whitehead¹¹ notes:

[a]cceptability is another important component of the quality of [health] care. It may be that some services are inequitable in the way they are organized, making them unacceptable to some sections of the community they are intended to serve (437).

Other important elements of health services thought to be related to health equity include approachability, availability, accommodation, and appropriateness.⁴² These factors may also be influenced by interdisciplinary team structure. More research should be directed toward these and other issues that might affect the achievement of greater vertical equity in the study of interdisciplinary primary care teams.

My study highlights the importance of paying close attention to how discourses about interdisciplinary primary care teams are used by powerful groups to influence the direction of primary care reform. Vigilance will be needed on the part of politicians and policymakers throughout Canada to ensure that community-based models are not overwritten by physician-based models, and by researchers everywhere focused on interdisciplinary primary care teams to ensure that issues of vertical equity are not ignored vis-à-vis issues of horizontal equity.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research [MDR 87983] ().

Author Biography

Susan Marie Haydt is a research facilitator and adjunct professor for the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University. Prior to obtaining her PhD in Sociology from Dalhousie University in 2015, she worked on a wide variety of research projects, including: pharmacist integration into family practice in Ontario; the readiness of rural and remote communities in Canada to adopt telehealth technologies; and the professionalization of project management. Her research interests include professions, health, gender and qualitative methods.

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