Primary Care Physician Insights Into a Typology of the Complex Patient in Primary Care

In the forward to the initial publication of the International Classification of Primary Care, Lamberts and Wood made the assertion that properly naming and counting things in primary care was essential to their recognition and more importantly being used to inform care.

In this paper Loeb and colleagues describe at the ground level the important aspects of the complexity of primary care and the care being delivered. This paper deserves to be read alongside the paper by Green and Klinkman, "Perspectives in Primary Care: The Foundational Urgent Importance of a Shared Primary Care Data Model."

In order to bring the complexity described by Loeb and colleagues to bear in everyday care, a data model that has the capacity to capture that complexity is essential.

Competing interests: None declared