Huisartsgeneeskunde: aantrekkingskracht en beroepstrouw ... - Lirias

118 Making General Practice Attractive: Encouraging GP attraction and Retention KCE Reports 90
is however at the center of the preoccupations: he/she has not to carry the cost of this
revision.
Regarding the quality of life, many suggestions concern the GP’s security: a better social
status, a health care center for the GPs and less control by the insurance.
The role of the GP is central in the health care system because of his/her knowledge of
the patient. However, the increase of necessary knowledge and the need for a balance
between private and working life call for a multidisciplinary approach to be developed
during training and during the practice in all aspects of collaboration.
Two policies concern the reinforcement of the use of information technology to
facilitate the sources of information and to share the patient’s data for better clinical
decisions. Positive relationships with colleagues and the group practice seem the best
ways for improving the quality of life and the demands of the GPs’ profession like duty,
continuity and ongoing training.
However, some respondents thought that sharing common medical records is more
appropriate and effective than sharing a common infrastructure whilst the patients
should keep a privileged link with one GP.
6.11 LIMITATIONS OF THE STAKEHOLDERS STUDY
The questionnaire was quite complex and the interview lasted mostly one-hour. The
stakeholders had to read, score and rank 24 policies, each one on four criteria
according to the multi-criteria analysis. This made the process sometimes very long
although most stakeholders showed a high level of interest during the interview. Some
criteria, such as acceptance by other professionals, were considered sometimes as
irrelevant while other ones included too many aspects (such as access).
The last topic (health organization policies) included perhaps too many policies (10
compared with 4 or 5 for the other topics). Keeping an amount of 5 policies in each
group would have been more consistent with the other topics.
A last possible limitation has to do with the number of the stakeholders in each of the
five groups (policymakers, sectional groups, cause groups, media and GPs). The size of
the groups was significant for face-to-face interviews but only allowed a global analysis
of the results as the statistical power was too weak to notice any statistical difference
between the groups.
6.12 SUMMARY: POLICIES TO BE IMPLEMENTED IN BELGIUM
TO IMPROVE ATTRACTION, RECRUITMENT AND
RETENTION OF THE GENERAL PRACTITIONERS: A
STAKEHOLDERS’ ANALYSIS
6.12.1 Most important policies
In the teaching topic, the integration of a GP’s perspective in the Master courses and
the obligation of a clerkship in general practice during the masters for all students were
the two policies that had the best score for attracting medical students regarding the
cost-benefit performance and the acceptance by other health professionals.
In the financing policies, the highest scored policy was incentives for practicing in
underserved areas (more supported by the non GP stakeholders than by the GP
stakeholders and more by the Dutch-speaking stakeholders than by the French-speaking
stakeholders). The most-preferred policy was the capitation in addition to other feefor-service
(more accepted by GP stakeholders than the other groups).
Regarding the work-life balance policies, the support of an “evolving” career and the
scrapping of the individual duty obligation are the two most important policies.
Among the health care organization policies, three policies stand out: the reinforcement
of GPs working together, the improvement of the role of the GP in the multidisciplinary
team, the delegation of some administrative tasks.