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Falch Lecture 2020

Can Multidisciplinary Teams Improve Norwegian Primary Care? Lessons from the United States

Welcome to the Falch Lesson 2020 with Professor at UCSF, Thomas Bodenheimer MD.

Main content

Workload in Norwegian general practice is increasing, with long hours and a shrinking proportion of these hours in direct patient care.

Similarly in the United States, with average panel size over 2000, primary care workload is heavy, with only 27% of physician time spent face to face with patients.

To address this problem, some U.S. primary care practices are creating multidisciplinary teams of nurses, pharmacists, psychologists and physical therapist who can see patients independently with high quality, thereby reducing physician workload.

To spread these teams broadly in the U.S., primary care — which receives a very small proportion of the total health care dollar — needs additional revenue.

Norwegian medical professionals are interested in the primary care team concept, and hope to learn from the U.S. experience, while acknowledging the profound differences between our two health systems.

Follow the lecture here.