Family Care Team

Abstract

Thailand has passed through three significant periods of health care reforms. The first two phases
of reforms were related to an increasing coverage of health-care infrastructure and health-care financing
mechanisms. In the third phase (at present), health-care reforms have shifted its focus to strengthening primary
care. An important health-care reform initiatives is capacity building of primary care staff to develop of
family care teams in both concept and practice. It is suited to the country context
1
. As Family Medicine was
established as a separate discipline in Thailand, newly trained family physicians work alongside untrained general
doctors in primary care. It has been shown that family care team training programs in Thailand can increase
the quality of primary care doctors to specialists
2
. In recently y ear 2015, the Family Care Team project
has progressed with establishing 15,000 teams in its 3-month run, while targeting the establishment of up
to 30,000 teams within this year by Ministry of Public Health, Thailand. The Family Care Team project is
a break through reformation of healthcare services in the cities and rural areas to cover all households in
the country. The project deploys the Family Care Teams from the Sub district Health Promoting Hospitals
to take care of people at their homes, along with the work from local volunteers, the establishment of a 24
hour consulting telephone line, and a seamless patient referring system3.