Can Multidisciplinary Teams Improve Norwegian Primary Care? Lessons from the United States
Welcome to the Falch Lesson 2020 with Professor at UCSF, Thomas Bodenheimer MD.
Main content
Workload in Norwegian general practice is increasing, with long hours and a shrinking proportion of these hours in direct patient care.
Similarly in the United States, with average panel size over 2000, primary care workload is heavy, with only 27% of physician time spent face to face with patients.
To address this problem, some U.S. primary care practices are creating multidisciplinary teams of nurses, pharmacists, psychologists and physical therapist who can see patients independently with high quality, thereby reducing physician workload.
To spread these teams broadly in the U.S., primary care — which receives a very small proportion of the total health care dollar — needs additional revenue.
Norwegian medical professionals are interested in the primary care team concept, and hope to learn from the U.S. experience, while acknowledging the profound differences between our two health systems.
Thomas Bodenheimer
MD, MPH is a general internist who received his medical degree at Harvard and completed his residency at UCSF.
He spent 32 years in full-time primary care practice in San Francisco's Mission District – 10 years in community health centers and 22 years in private practice.
He is currently Professor Emeritus of Family and Community Medicine at University of California, San Francisco and Founding Director of the Center for Excellence in Primary Care (CEPC).
He is co-author of Understanding Health Policy, 8th Edition, 2020, and Improving Primary Care, 2006 (both McGraw-Hill). He has written numerous health policy articles in the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Annals of Family Medicine, and Health Affairs.
