Improving the Accessibility of Frontline Services

Abstract

Even in mature health systems, universal access to frontline health services remains largely aspirational. Most countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have few general practitioners relative to specialists, and many systems suffer from long wait times for primary care or limited options outside standard office hours. Those living in disadvantaged communities or on the margins of society, including rural, poor, minority, mobility constrained, and immigrant patients, can also face entrenched physical, social, and financial barriers to accessing health services, even in countries with universal health coverage. Universal coverage of accessible frontline services will require creative solutions to encourage physician entry into primary care (see Brief 15c); task shifting to emerging cadres of workers (see Brief 7c); creating flexible, nontraditional care models that make it easier to access care; and reaching populations excluded under the status quo.