A new study released Wednesday morning from the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy shows having a family doctor close to home is not a priority for Manitobans.

The study, titled ‘Describing Patient Populations for the My Health Team Initiative,’ was commissioned by Manitoba Health to help make decisions on where to introduce a new team-based primary care model.

Primary care is the initial access point to healthcare for Manitobans that’s provided by family physicians or nurse practitioners.

Principal investigator Dr. Dan Chateau says the findings show that Manitobans are not necessarily choosing a family physician close to where they live.

“People often access a clinic close to their workplace, or a clinic that has been recommended to them, but isn’t close to their home,” Chateau said in a release. “Another factor is that people will move some distance away, but continue to see the same family doctor.”

The study shows 45 per cent of Winnipeggers travel outside their neighbourhood for care, 50 per cent of people living near Winnipeg travel into the city, whereas 60 per cent of people living far from Winnipeg stay within their boundaries.

Dr. Alan Katz, director of the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, said this data will help policy makers in a few different ways.

The first is coordinating care happening in different settings, like care in the home and care in a clinic.

“You have nurses working in the community who have to deal with multiple physicians from all over the city, because the patients who live in that area may be getting care from anywhere in the city," Dr. Katz said.

He added that it will also help to allocate funding.

"The majority of people who live in Southern do not get their care in that region, so they are getting care in Winnipeg. So should the funding go to Southern Health or should the funding go to Winnipeg care providers?"

The study also found that one in three Manitobans do not see a primary care provider regularly, meaning they see a family physician or nurse practitioner less than once each year.

Chateau said that’s not necessarily a bad statistic.

"In that one in three there are some individuals who should be seeing a physician, but for a good portion of them, they're otherwise healthy Manitobans who have no particular need to see a physician on a regular basis," he said.

Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen says he’s seen the report and says the information is helpful.

“Obviously data drives decisions in healthcare, not politics and politicians. So I would be surprised if this data in particular didn’t drive future decisions. But we haven’t done enough analysis to know what those decisions will be and what direction they will drive us.”

For this study researchers looked at health data over a three year period (2011-2014).