Planned task transfers leave Iceland’s primary care development centre’s future uncertain

The future of the Development Centre for Icelandic Primary Health Care is uncertain after staff were told that an unspecified number of its duties may move to the Directorate of Health, Morgunblaðið reports. The centre oversees specialist training for family doctors, coordinates working practices across primary care services nationwide and supports their development.

Some staff believe the plan is a step towards closing the centre. Its director, Anna Bryndís Blöndal, said its final future had not been decided, but that the planned changes would significantly alter its work.

“Some of our tasks will move to the Directorate of Health, while others will remain with us,” Anna told Morgunblaðið. She said the centre would meet with the ministry during the week and stressed the need for clear responsibility for the work it has led, developed and coordinated.

Health Minister Alma D. Möller presented a draft regulation on primary care in mid-July. The omission of any reference to the centre alarmed many family doctors. Jón Steinar Jónsson, then the centre’s outgoing chief medical officer, said at the time that removing it from the regulation put work vital to future staffing at risk. He warned that development, recruitment and training in family medicine could suffer.

The tasks the minister intends to transfer have not been specified beyond providing various guidelines to primary care services. The minister’s announcement said specialist training for family doctors would remain with the centre, but did not say whether that would become its only responsibility.

Anna said the ministry’s main argument for the changes was that all clinical guidelines should be consolidated under the Directorate of Health, as they were when the Digital Health platform was established at the beginning of the year. She said the centre supported having the guidelines in one place.

However, other duties that may be transferred include training staff at health institutions nationwide, coordinating their work and developing primary care services. Anna said she was particularly concerned about the future of the development work if the centre were closed. Unlike hospitals such as Landspítali, she said, the centre supports and advises primary care clinics across the country.