Improving the Quality and Capacity of Canada's Health Services: Primary Care Physician Perspectives.

Objective: This study set out to identify the perspectives of family physicians (FP/GPs) on the quality and capacity of the services they provide and of the system in which they work, to assess their responsiveness to potential changes and to determine their suggestions for future directions to enhance primary care services.

Methods: Thematic results from prior focus groups with FP/GPs provided direction for a questionnaire sent to practitioners in the urban study area. Seventy-four questions, most using a five-point Likert scale, were grouped into 10 sections: physician issues (based on themes from the focus groups), access to specialist services, workload, scope of practice, primary care physician networks, interdisciplinary collaborative practice, complexities and challenges of family practice, future directions, comments and demographics.