Realising the Potential of Primary Health Care
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The rapid spread of COVID-19 added urgency to the need to address long-standing pressures on health systems, linked to growing citizens’ expectations, population ageing and more complex and costly health care needs. As the first point of contact, primary health care that provides comprehensive, continuous, and co-ordinated care is key to boosting preventive care, treating those who need care, and helping people become more active in managing their own health. It has the potential to improve health system efficiency and health outcomes for people across socio-economic levels, and make health systems people-centred. This report examines primary health care across OECD countries before the COVID-19 pandemic, and draws attention to how primary health care is not living up to its full potential. Doing things differently – through new models of organising services, better co-ordination among providers, better use of digital technology, and better use of resources and incentives – helps to improve care, reduce the need for hospitalisations, and mitigate health inequalities. This report identifies key policy challenges that OECD countries need to address to realise the full potential of primary health care, and reviews progress and innovations towards transforming primary health care.
Foreword
Even before the COVID‑19 pandemic, health systems in OECD countries faced significant challenges. Citizen expectations about health services are high, societies are ageing, health spending is rising in response to more complex health needs, and fiscal pressures make it difficult to expand allocations of resources to the health sector. The rapid spread of COVID‑19 added complexity to these challenges, given both the surge in demand for treatment of the acutely ill and the need to continue to deliver preventive care and manage chronic patients. In this context, primary health care plays a key role for health systems to deliver more and better services. As the first point of contact that is expected to address the majority of health needs, strong primary health care has all the potential to improve health outcomes for people across socio-economic levels and to reduce unnecessary use of more expensive specialised services. But is primary health care across the OECD ready and living up to these expectations?
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