Patient Perspectives on Using Primary Care in Singapore: The Influence of System Context on Lived Experience and Health Policy
Details
In Singapore’s primary care system, patients can choose any public or private physician and often use more than one provider to meet their primary care needs. This presentation will describe a qualitative study to understand 48 Singapore adults’ primary care usage patterns, their valuing of continuity of care, and the factors influencing both. Data collection occurred prior to and early in Singapore introducing the Healthier SG programme, a large-scale government initiative to shift Singapore’s primary care system to where patients “choose and enroll with a family doctor.” Results from this study also speak to the wider literature around patient choice of providers and primary care use patterns in other health care systems.
Objectives:
- Understand Singapore’s primary care system and patient perspectives on using this system
- Understand the importance of considering health care system context for health policy design
Laurie J. Goldsmith
Senior Research Fellow, Division of Family Medicine, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore
Dr. Laurie J. Goldsmith is a qualitative and mixed methods health services and health policy researcher. She has conducted research in Singapore, Canada, and the United States through multidisciplinary collaborations, including partnerships with patients, providers, and health system decision makers. Her research focuses on the patient and physician experience of receiving and delivering health care and the influence of health care structure on health care delivery. Additional interests include access to health care from empirical, policy, and theoretical perspectives; and patient and public involvement in research. She holds a PhD in Health Policy from the University of North Carolina and a MSc in Health Research Methodology from McMaster University. Dr. Goldsmith is a Senior Research Fellow in the Division of Family Medicine and the Centre for Research in Health System Performance at the Yoo Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore. She is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Toronto and in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University.