Beyond fighting fires and chasing tails? Chronic illness care plans in Ontario, Canada

Recent work has conceptualized new models for the primary care management of patients with chronic illness. This study investigated the experience of family physicians and patients with a chronic illness management initiative that involved the joint formulation of comprehensive individual patient care plans.

A qualitative evaluation, framed by phenomenology, immediately followed a randomized controlled trial examining the effect of external facilitators in enhancing the delivery of chronic condition care planning in primary care. The study, set in Ontario family practices, used semistructured in-depth interviews with a purposive sample of 13 family physicians, 20 patients, and all 3 study facilitators. Analysis used independent transcript review and constant comparative methods.

Despite the intervention being grounded in patient-centered principles, family physicians generally viewed chronic illness management from a predominantly biomedical perspective. Only a few enthusiasts viewed systematic care planning as a new approach to managing patients with chronic illness. Most family physicians found the strategy to be difficult to implement within existing organizational and financial constraints. For these participants, care planning conflicted with preexisting concepts of their role and of their patient's abilities to become partners in care. The few patients who noticed the process spoke favorably about their experience.

Although the experiences of the enthusiastic family physicians were encouraging, we found important individual-level barriers to chronic illness management in primary care. These issues seemed to transcend existing organizational and resource constraints.