Canadian clinicians and administrators build a data bridge to improve community-based response to the pandemic

Clinicians and administrators in Alberta, Canada, built a data bridge between primary care and public health stakeholders to improve the province's community-based response to the pandemic.

The authors traced the data bridge's foundations to: policy commitments to the Patient Medical Home model as well as organizational and governance structures that actively drew together primary care and non-primary care stakeholders.

Those commitments and structures opened the possibility for champions to emerge, trust to evolve, and integrative improvisation of health care practices to take place. Without a functional and well-established interface between independent primary care and the central health system, the authors argue that both pandemic responses, and everyday primary care integration efforts are likely to suffer.