Best Advice Guides

Best Advice Guide: Advanced and Meaningful Use of EMRs
The College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC) and Canada Health Infoway have partnered to offer family physicians practical guidance about the advanced and meaningful use of electronic medical record (EMR) capabilities in this new guide, since many family practice environments have adopted an EMR system and are increasingly incorporating digital health tools into practice.

Best Advice Guide: Recovery-Oriented Mental Health and Addiction Care in the Patient’s Medical Home
The Best Advice Guide: Recovery-Oriented Mental Health and Addictions Care in the Patient’s Medical Home provides guidance to family physicians and their teams offering mental health and addiction services using a recovery-oriented approach.

Best Advice Guide: Caring for Military Families in the Patient’s Medical Home
Military service members and their families experience a unique combination of circumstances that few other Canadians encounter, and family physicians have an important role to play in ensuring they stay healthy.

Best Advice Guide: Team-Based Care in the Patient’s Medical Home
Team-based care is an integral part of the Patient’s Medical Home (PMH) model. The continuous, comprehensive, patient-centred care provided by these family practices is made even more effective by building a strong, well-connected team that strives for the same goal. This guide examines the benefits of team-based care for both practice efficiency and patients’ health outcomes. 

Best Advice Guide: Communities of Practice in the Patient’s Medical Home
The CFPC’s Best Advice guide Communities of Practice supports one of the pillars in the Patient’s Medical Home (PMH)—the concept of team-based care. This guide focuses on intraprofessional collaboration between family physicians, and provides actionable advice for establishing and maintaining communities of practice. Family physicians with special interests (FPSIs) include one or more areas of special interest as integrated parts of the broad scope of services they offer. Family physicians with focused practices are those who are committed to one or more clinical areas as major components of their practice. Communities of practice allow family physicians with these special interests or enhanced skills to better serve their patients and communities by offering a wider range of services, where appropriate.

Best Advice Guide: Chronic Care Management in a Patient’s Medical Home
CFPC’s Best Advice Guide: Chronic Care Management in a Patient’s Medical Home provides actionable advice to family physicians about chronic care management in family practice settings. While this guide applies to all types of family practices, the strategies described involve many important components of the Patient’s Medical Home model. With proper intervention and ongoing care family doctors can help prevent and control the impacts of chronic diseases by implementing practical chronic care management strategies in their practices.

Best Advice Guide: Health Literacy in the Patient’s Medical Home
The latest Best Advice Guide on the topic of Health Literacy supports the crucial first pillar in the Patient’s Medical Home (PMH), Patient-Centeredness. This guide explores ways in which family physicians can support their patients understanding of health information by enhancing their own communication skills, increasing use of health literacy assessment tools in the practice, and by making better use of appropriate resources to match patients’ literacy needs during clinical interactions.

Best Advice Guide: Physicians Remuneration in a Patient’s Medical Home
As part of the CFPC’s ongoing advocacy for the Patient’s Medical Home, the Remuneration Best Advice Guide, aims to support family physicians and policy decision makers with information on how a remuneration model can address different community needs, and the outcomes associated with the models in different scenarios.

Best Advice Guide: Timely Access to Appointments in Family Practice
The PMH Best Advice Guide on Timely Access is a tool highlighting the guiding principles for timely access scheduling, and emphasizing that continuity and comprehensiveness of patient care are critical elements of family practice.  The guide acknowledges that populations who have better access to continuing care from the same personal physician have fewer hospitalizations and better health outcomes.

Best Advice Guide: Social Determinants of Health
This practical guide provides family physicians with concrete steps on how to consider and improve patients’ social determinants of health (SDoH). The document provides a background on the social determinants of health, and a practical component with suggested clinical, community, and population-level interventions.

Best Advice Guide: Patient Rostering in Family Practice
The PMH Best Advice Guide on Rostering is a tool that provides information to Canadian family physicians who have already implemented or are considering patient rostering in their practices. Rostering is when patients register with a family practice, family physician, or team. The paper highlights the benefits and limitations of patient rostering and provides information to help physicians implement rostering in family practice.

Best Advice Guide: Patient-Centred Care in a Patient’s Medical Home
This practical guide provides physicians with a background on the importance of providing care centered on patient needs. The document offers concrete suggestions on how to make family practices more patient-centred by engaging patients in planning and delivery of their care.

Best Advice Guide: Panel Size
The PMH Best Advice Guide on Panel Size is a tool that provides Canadian family physicians with guidance on factors affecting practice panel size. Panel size is defined as the number of individual patients under the care of a specific provider. This resource defines panel size, provides approaches, identifies factors that affect panel size, and addresses the measures that gauge performance.

Best Advice Guide: Adopting EMRs in a Patient's Medical Home
This practical guide provides family physicians with concrete suggestions on what to consider when adopting an electronic medical record (EMR) system in a primary practice. The document will discuss topics, such as what is an EMR, factors to consider when adopting an EMR system within one’s practice, and the potential benefits and challenges of adopting this technology.