Barriers to Primary Care Team Formation

Primary Care Teams
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Barriers to Primary Care Team Formation
Multiple challenges were encountered while forming primary care teams. One of the barriers included confusion regarding responsibilities, authority, and knowledge. Various team members’ responsibilities limited the caregivers’ ability to operate depending on professional degree rather than competency under performance evaluation. There were no critical reasons why receptionists could not advise patients provided they received enough training, mentorship, and competency evaluation. Also, there were no reasons why well-trained and mentored medical assistants could not record patients’ initial medical history for more evaluation by physicians since patients regularly enter their personal history on the medical records systems (Naqvi et al., 2019). Physicians felt more superior to other team members, which lowered the morale of other members.
Similarly, some payment methods only reimbursed physician-related practices ignoring critical services offered by other team members. Poor communication and decision-making were other barriers experienced due to inadequate time spent educating, listening, and negotiating with the staff and patients’ planned changes and basis. Healthcare management did not conduct patient consultation and community committee to engage patients in the healthcare delivery.
Further, physicians were focused on patient care and failed to mentor other healthcare team members who were viewed as a threat and intrusion to the privacy of patients and confidentiality as they requested for consultations. The practice resulted in poor interprofessional relationships among team members, resulting in a lack of mutual respect among the primary care providers (O’Malley, Gourevitch, Draper, Bond, & Tirodkar, 2015). The soiled working mentality for multiple teams with different patient agendas and inadequate decision-making collaboration lead to diffusions of responsibility. Also, it delays service delivery to patients as primary care teams lack clarity on their respective functions.
Why Teams are More Difficult in Primary Settings Compared to Single-Specialty
The formation of teams in primary healthcare can be challenging due to the aspect of cost-sharing. Provision of primary care in comprehensive labor and facility surrounding depletes almost 60% of the total revenue acquired. Due to the co...