A taxonomy of primary health care practices: an avenue for informing management and policy implementation

Abstract

Health policy and practice managers often treat primary practices as being homogenous, despite evidence that these organisations vary along multiple dimensions. This treatment can be a barrier to the development of a strong health care system. Therefore, a more sophisticated taxonomy of organisations could inform management and policy to better cater to the diversity of practice contexts, needs and capabilities. The purpose of this study was to categorise primary practices using practice features and characteristics associated with the job satisfaction of GPs. The current study uses data from 3906 GPs from the 2008 wave of the MABEL survey. Seven configurations of primary health care practices emerged from multivariate cluster analyses. The configurations incorporate, yet move beyond, simplistic categorisations such as geographic location and highlight the complexity facing managers and health policy interventions. The multidimensional configurations in the taxonomy are a mechanism for informing health care management and policy. The process of deriving configurations can be applied in a variety of countries and contexts.