Community-Oriented Primary Care - Purpose and Principles

Introduction:

Community-oriented primary care unifies the clinical care of individuals in the community and aspects of community medicine. Community-oriented primary care is a systematic approach to the practice of medicine in the community built on principles of epidemiology and community organization.

Community-oriented primary care blends:

• Personal health care and public health.

• Epidemiology and primary care.

Community-oriented primary care is a continuous process by which primary healthcare is provided to a defined community based on its assessed health needs through the planned integration of primary care practice and public health. Community-oriented primary care is a defined systematic approach to health that brings the community into the primary care planning and delivery process.

What Is a Community?

A group of people living in a specific geographical region under the same circumstances, such as environment, occupation, and social system. The characteristics of a community are:

• Religious groups.

• Socioeconomic status.

• Ethnic-cultural groups.

• Age groups.

• Occupational groups.

What Are the Cardinal Features of Community-Oriented Primary Care?

The salient features of community-oriented primary care are:

1. The provision of primary care for individuals and families in the community, with exceptional attention to the continuity of care. Suitable arrangements must be made for consultative services, specialist care, coordinated care, and hospitalization.

2. A focus on the community as a whole and its subgroups when planning and providing services, appraising needs, and evaluating care effects.

3. Community-oriented primary care is based on epidemiology, public health principles, and primary medicine and preventive care.

4. Community-oriented primary care comprises a team of health practitioners, health professionals, and community leaders who work together to address the specific health needs within diverse communities on a local and global level.

What Does Community Refer to in Community-Oriented Primary Care?

Community in community-oriented primary care refers to

• A true community, in the sociological aspect.

• A well-defined neighborhood.

• Students in a defined school, workers in a defined factory or company, and employees in a defined institution or organization.

• Individuals registered at a physicians' group practice, neighborhood health center, or health maintenance organization.

• Users of a defined service.

What Is the Purpose of Community-Oriented Primary Care?

Community-oriented primary care (COPC) is a strategy whereby the elements of primary health care and community medicine are structurally developed and integrated into a coordinated practice for the welfare of a community.

What Is the Principle of Community-Oriented Primary Care?

Community-oriented primary care (COPC) is dedicated to improving a community's health using principles of public health, preventive medicine and primary care, and epidemiology, which has been shown to have positive health benefits for communities worldwide.

What Are the Five Principles of Community-Oriented Primary Care?

1. Responsibility for a defined population's health and health care.

2. Health care is based on identified health needs at the population level.

3. Prioritization.

4. The intervention covers all stages of the health-illness continuum.

5. Community participation.

What Is the Significant Role of Community-Oriented Primary Care?

Community-oriented primary care is a union of public health and primary care, and its significant roles are as follows:

• Community-oriented primary care addresses the environmental and social causes of poor health within a community with the assistance of a primary care physician.

• Addresses health determinants.

• Conducts vaccination programs, routine health checks, and disease management programs.

• Associates with different professionals and organizations to improve health.

• Establishes policy plans for improving health.

• Creates awareness towards good health, management, and prevention of diseases.

What Are the Processes of Development of Community-Oriented Primary Care?

The process of developing community-oriented primary care by integrating community orientations into existing primary care practices is as follows:

• Preliminary Step: Defining the community included in a particular practice is essential in developing COPC.

• Community Health Diagnosis and Health Surveillance: The determinants of community health diagnosis and health surveillance change as the state of health of a community changes. Thus, regular evaluation, diagnosis, and planning of intervention are essential.

• Implementation.

• Evaluation.

• Decision-making for future action.

What Are the Four Process Steps in Community-Oriented Primary Care?

• Define the community of interest.

• Identify the health problem.

• Develop and implement interventions.

• Conduct ongoing evaluation.

Why Is Community-Oriented Primary Care Important?

It is known that it takes a village to do meaningful things. Therefore, team engagement and community involvement are critical to successful programs, quality of health, and better health outcomes for the entire community.

• It establishes the definition of a community.

• It outlines the needs assessment.

• It helps improve quality.

• It develops a uniform data system for reporting.

• It serves as a meaningful tool for health outcomes.

• It also helps in primary care medical home applications.

• It receives more comprehensive grants.

• It also addresses more upstream factors.

• It helps equity by reaching those needing the resources.

• It helps in marketing.

• It helps in changing the funding environment.

• It helps identify health problems by forming key informants and focus groups through primary data collection and prioritizing health problems.

• It helps improve the health of a community.

• It helps to receive more full grants.

• It also helps to improve ongoing projects as well.

What Is Evaluation in Community-Oriented Primary Care?

Evaluation in community-oriented primary care is crucial as it helps provide feedback, uncover areas that need future intervention, and obtain funding. However, the misconceptions associated with evaluation are that it is a complex process, requires complicated statistical methods, and that evaluation begins after the completion of the project.

What Are the Barriers in Community-Oriented Primary Care?

Community-oriented primary care is the future of medicine. But, the barriers associated with community-oriented primary care are the need for more time, expertise, contacts, and financial incentives. However, the barriers are succeeded by the developments that address the lack of time and expertise through implementing electronic heath records and other online tools in the healthcare system for better health outcomes.

What Is the Role of Learners in Community-Oriented Primary Care?

The learners play an important role as they are a part of the community health center heritage and also possess the following characteristics:

• Idealistic.

• Help in accomplishing quality improvement and scholarly projects.

• Help them prepare for future funding changes.

Conclusion

Community-oriented primary care combines public health practice and clinical medicine. It is a platform whereby primary health care and community medicine elements are strategically developed and integrated into a coordinated approach. The focus on this kind of integration in the community-oriented primary care platform was one of the features of the declaration on primary health care at the Alma-Ata conference.