Patient Registration & Continuity of Care [PHC-01-EN]

Patient Registration & Continuity of Care [PHC-01-EN]

Across primary health care systems worldwide, patient registration is routinely performed yet rarely leveraged as the clinical governance instrument it is designed to be. When registration functions merely as an administrative entry point — unlinked to a named clinician, an updated health profile, or a longitudinal care plan — the foundational promise of primary care is broken before a single consultation begins. The World Health Organization’s evidence synthesis on people-centred primary care identifies deficient continuity of care as a direct contributor to avoidable hospitalisations, missed chronic disease management, and erosion of patient trust. In Georgia, where the 2023–2030 Universal Health Coverage roadmap explicitly prioritises strengthening primary health care infrastructure in both urban polyclinics and rural ambulatory centres, these competencies are no longer aspirational — they are operationally required.

This course is built on the Ambient Standard Framework (ASF) PHC accreditation standard and situates its requirements within the broader architecture of WHO’s Primary Health Care Performance Initiative (PHCPI) benchmarks and JCI Ambulatory Care Standards. Participants engage with peer-reviewed evidence on relational continuity, informational continuity, and management continuity — the three-domain model validated in the Haggerty et al. framework and widely adopted in international quality improvement literature. Teaching integrates structured case analysis drawn from South Caucasus clinical settings, applied standard interpretation, and reflective practice exercises that allow participants to audit their own facility’s current registration and continuity processes against measurable criteria.

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Distinguish the ASF PHC accreditation standard from hospital accreditation frameworks, articulating the specific scope, population health principles, and governance obligations unique to primary care settings.
• Interpret the three dimensions of continuity of care — relational, informational, and management continuity — and identify which dimension is most compromised within their own clinical environment.
• Apply WHO and JCI registration requirements to design a patient registration workflow that captures longitudinal demographic, clinical, and social determinant data from the point of first contact.
• Construct a facility-level accountability structure that assigns named clinician responsibility to registered patient panels and defines escalation pathways when continuity is interrupted.
• Evaluate current practice against ASF PHC standard indicators using a structured gap-analysis tool, producing a prioritised list of corrective actions suitable for a quality improvement cycle.
• Demonstrate documentation practices for care summaries and inter-visit handover that meet accreditation evidence requirements and support safe information transfer across providers and care episodes.

Who Should Attend

This course is designed for general practitioners, family physicians, and primary care nurses working in accredited or accreditation-seeking ambulatory facilities, polyclinics, and rural health centres across Georgia and the broader South Caucasus region. It is equally relevant for medical directors, quality managers, and registration administrators responsible for designing or auditing patient-facing intake and record systems. Professionals at both early-career and mid-career stages will benefit, particularly those preparing their facility for an ASF PHC accreditation cycle or seeking to align existing workflows with Universal Health Coverage commitments.

Course Structure

PHC-01-EN is delivered as a self-paced online course on the GMJ Academy platform, requiring an estimated four to five hours of study time and comprising video-based instruction, annotated standard excerpts, case-based scenarios, and a summative knowledge assessment requiring a minimum score of 75% for successful completion. Participants who meet the completion criteria receive a GMJ Academy certificate of achievement carrying continuing professional development credit in accordance with the Georgian Medical Association CPD framework.