Why is Family Medicine Important?

Featuring Dr. Daniel Ngui, BSc (P.T), MD, CFPC, FCFP

Duration: 1 minute, 55 seconds

Not having access to a family doctor or to primary healthcare can lead to healthcare inequities. 

This will definitely lead to problems in terms of fragmented care for patients, increased healthcare costs, as well as challenges to long-term continuous care for patients and their families.

What we do know is that studies in British Columbia, Canada, internationally show that having a strong relationship with a family doctor and having a strong primary healthcare system can lead to reduced healthcare costs, better patient satisfaction and truly better healthcare outcomes.

For example, in British Columbia, they studied the fact that having a strong doctor-patient relationship or attachment, led to reduced costs for high-needs patients.

To enhance a doctor-patient relationship we encourage patients to come to our offices and work with us or our healthcare teams. As a family physician and as a healthcare team, we like to offer our best to our patients. We want to offer the best possible attention. 

We want to help to provide timely access whenever possible. We want to keep a ongoing health record. We want to keep up to date and provide all our patients with the latest up-to-date care, as well as be able to listen openly and honestly and provide our feedback openly and honestly. 

In return, we ask that patients do their best to seek care, whenever possible, from their family physician or healthcare team, to speak openly and honestly about all their medical conditions, as well as whenever needing to seek emergency care, walk-in care – if possible – to share all the things that have been done so that we know and can plan for future treatments on future visits.

Presenter: Dr. Daniel Ngui, Family Doctor, Vancouver, BC

Local Practitioners: Family Doctor