About PHCS
Our Mission: Primary Health Care Services of Peterborough is committed to providing all residents of our community with a high-quality, seamless care experience built upon the foundation of primary care. PHCS will enhance quality of life for residents and health care professionals by leading the development of an integrated and effective health care system.
Primary Health Care Services of Peterborough (PHCS) is a non-profit organization that was created in 2005 to act as the coordinating agency for the five Peterborough Networked Family Health Teams. Today it supports over 150 health professionals working in primary care in Peterborough County. Over 50 of these are newly funded positions that did not exist before the creation of Family Health Teams.
In 2007, PHCS’ Board of Directors formally endorsed a Mission, Vision, and Values for PHCS and the Peterborough Networked Family Health Teams that would guide our work beyond the creation of FHTs in response to the unattached-patient crisis in Peterborough.
What We Do
PHCS plays a number of important roles in building and sustaining Family Health Teams, and in enhancing the health system in Peterborough County more generally. To list only a few of its services to practitioners and to the community, PHCS:
- Provides the expertise to recruit and retain new health professionals, including nurse practitioners, social workers, mental health workers, dietitians, and pharmacists
- Negotiates with the Ministry of Health and other funders to identify and meet the needs of primary care professionals and our community
- Facilitates and helps to fund new capital development, including physical plant and information technology
- Coordinates health care program development and quality improvement within primary care in response to provider interest and population need
- Works extensively with other agencies and partners to identify opportunities for expanding the role of primary care in leading the health system
PHCS is recognized by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and by other agencies and partners, including the Central East Local Health Integration Network, as the voice of primary care renewal in Peterborough County. PHCS and the Peterborough Networked Family Health Teams are also recognized as leaders in the development of new models of primary care. This dual recognition affords PHCS a unique opportunity to further the goals of our team members and our community.
Core Principles
Underpinning the drive to change within the Peterborough FHTs are a set of principles that help to define our goals and our methods.
The first is the fundamental importance of a strong, well-resourced primary care sector to community health and to the sustainability of the health system. The importance of primary care was clarified by the crisis that Peterborough underwent when the system began to fail. Family Health Team goals must continue to reflect community needs and to recognize the relationship between our work and the prosperity and well-being of our community.
Second, we know that a defining attribute of primary care is the comprehensive and longitudinal relationship between the clinician and the patient, which in turn affects the patient’s experience of health and of illness. We believe that a well-functioning health system has this relationship at its heart, and must therefore depend on a strong primary care sector.
We are committed to patient-centred care, both in support for individual provider-patient relationships and in our role as health system leader. Every patient’s experience will be respectful, without prejudice and built on confidence and trust.
This relationship also means that good primary care practitioners have responsibility for the patient’s entire well-being. By implication, chronic disease prevention and management, for example, should be approached as part of that relationship rather than as a separate silo of care.
