Direction of Family Physicians towards Thai Health Care System

Abstract

A family doctor is a medical doctor who specialized in family medicine. A family  doctor, believed to be a personal doctor   for a patient, is specifically trained to provide primary health care. Based on primary care cluster  roadmap by Ministry of Public Health of Thailand in 2016 and the Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand 2017, Ministry of Public Health sets a target of providing one family doctor per 10,000 populations. As  a consequence  of this policy, family doctor is an increasingly important  specialty in Thai society.It is evident that primary health care services and family physicians are associated with better health     outcomes, more access to primary care services and lower health expenditures. In order to reform the primary health care model,  it is required to have sufficient  numbers of family physicians. It has been demonstrated   that factors associated  with specialty career decision making and doctor retention in remote areas are specialty and rural exposures during medical schools, salaries, characteristics of each specialty, infrastructures of workplace and appropriate living environments.