Co-development of a public primary care occupational therapy and physical therapy telephone consultation service

Context: In recent years, given significant challenges with accessing primary care physicians in Canada, there has been increased attention towards involving other health care providers, such as rehabilitation professionals, for managing different conditions. For instance, persons with symptoms related to musculoskeletal disorders, chronic pain, mobility limitations, or long COVID, for instance, could benefit from rapid access to advice and education by rehabilitation professionals, but access to public rehabilitation services is currently limited in the Canadian health care system. The implementation of a public primary care telephone consultation service provided by occupational therapists and physical therapists was identified as a promising strategy to help better meet population needs and reduce the use of other costly services (e.g. emergency room visits, unnecessary medical consultations, imaging tests, medication).

Objective: To co-develop a public telephone consultation service provided by occupational therapists and physiotherapists in Canada’s second most densely populated province, Québec.

Study Design and Analysis: This partnership-based co-development project included a review of available scientific and gray literature, as well as critical reflection and discussion meetings. The co-development was guided by the intervention mapping process and led to the production of a detailed logic model for the innovation.

Data set and Population Studied: Representatives of the research team, healthcare network practitioners, as well as managers from the Ministry of health worked together to gather and analyse content from the different data sources to build the logic model for the innovation. Intervention, Outcome measures and Results: The logic model produced details the objectives, nature of interventions, target populations, inputs, activities, and outputs for this innovation. The rationale underlying the implementation of the telephone consultation service was founded on three main axes:

1)Providing rapid access to professional advice and recommendations to the population, 2)Optimizing the use of professional expertise adapted to population needs, 3)Improving population selfmanagement and quality of life.

Conclusion: This project allowed to consolidate a partnership through the co-development of the telephone consultation services. The next step will be the development and implementation of a pilot project of the primary care innovation.