What is Primary Care?

2. What is Primary Care? • The IOM defines primary care as “the provision of integrated, accessible health care services by clinicians who are accountable for addressing a large majority of personal health care needs, developing a sustained partnership with patients, and practicing in the context of family & community.

3. Why this forum? • Discuss barriers in current PHC service. • Identify the most promising & effective approaches to ensuring access to basic care. • Explore examples of community-based models that have already proven successful. • Help policymakers, leaders& funders recognize the array of opportunities for ensuring access to health care in KSA.

4. WHO’s 2008 World Health Report • emphasizes the importance of primary health care. • provides a critical assessment of health care systems throughout the world, • describes how all nations, regardless of national wealth, can benefit by enacting reforms organized around primary health care.

5. ACP position • A strong primary care infrastructure is an essential part of high-functioning health systems in developed countries. • ACP documented over 100 studies that confirm the value of primary care. • Primary care improves health outcomes, increases quality, and reduces health care costs. • Primary care physicians provide 52% of all ambulatory care visits, • 80% of patient visits for hypertension, and • 69% of visits for both chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and diabetes,

6. Challenges • Primary care physicians make up only one-third of the U.S. physician workforce. • Compelling evidence demonstrates better health outcomes and decreased health care costs when primary care physicians make up over 50% of a nation’s physician supply. American College of Physicians. Solutions to the Challenges Facing Primary Care Medicine. Philadelphia: American College of Physicians; 2009: Policy Monograph.

7. SPEAKERS