GPs and elderly patients: organizing a care network

Over the last years Old Public Administration has been gradually abandoned in favor of more decentralized management models, in which hospitals mainly provide specialized services and treat acute phases. Along these lines, primary care is gaining a new central role in giving direct medical assistance, but also in helping patients to manage autonomously their conditions. In this paper we analyze how General Practitioners (GPs) support a particularly fragile category, elderly patients with complex therapies, drawing on five focus groups with GPs, conducted in a mountain province of Northeast Italy. Through an analysis of GPs’ self-representations about their work we have identified various kinds of strategies adopted depending on the circumstances. In this work we describe some of the complexities emerging from the redefinition of the healthcare systems with particular attention to GPs and their new relevance in promoting and safeguarding the health and life satisfaction of their patients. This new scenario imposes to develop new competences, to regain social legitimation they used to have, to build new forms of alliance and coordination with their hospital’s colleagues but also with increasingly informed and demanding patients and relatives.