{"id":175963,"date":"2025-09-28T18:57:27","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T18:57:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/175963\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T18:57:27","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T18:57:27","slug":"ontario-to-expand-funding-for-primary-health-care-teams-based-on-initial-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/175963\/","title":{"rendered":"Ontario to expand funding for primary health-care teams based on initial success"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Lack of access to comprehensive primary care is a problem across Canada, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information and Statistics Canada, whose most recent data is from 2023.Sammy Kogan\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

The Ontario government says its plan to fund new primary care clinics across the province is paying dividends, with nearly 100,000 patients on the official waiting list for a family doctor having recently found a new medical provider. <\/p>\n

Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones said the number of people registered on Health Care Connect has fallen by 42 per cent since the Progressive Conservative government began a concerted effort to expand access to primary care in a province where 2.5 million people did not have a family doctor as of September, 2023. <\/p>\n

Ontario has more family doctors, but fewer are working in primary care, study shows<\/a><\/p>\n

How is health care functioning in Ontario now? What the data say about wait times, doctor shortages and emergency rooms<\/a><\/p>\n

Ms. Jones shared the latest wait-list figures in Brampton on Monday as she announced that the provincial government is launching its next call for proposals for 75 new or enlarged interprofessional health teams. <\/p>\n

The goal is for those future teams to provide 500,000 more Ontarians a base for regular primary care. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis brings us another step closer to connecting everyone in Ontario to a primary care clinician by 2029,\u201d Ms. Jones said at an event hosted by the North Peel Family Health Team. <\/p>\n

Lack of access to comprehensive primary care is a problem across Canada, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information and Statistics Canada, whose most recent data<\/a> is from 2023. That year, 17 per cent of Canadian adults \u2013 the equivalent of 5.4 million people \u2013 said they didn\u2019t have access to a regular health care provider. <\/p>\n

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Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones announced Monday that the provincial government is launching its next call for proposals for dozens of new or enlarged interprofessional health teams.Tijana Martin\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Ontario, where 12 per cent of survey respondents said they didn\u2019t have a family doctor or nurse practitioner, fared better than any other Canadian jurisdiction. <\/p>\n

But other sources, including the Ontario College of Family Physicians, say those survey findings underestimate the difficulty of finding a doctor in Canada\u2019s most populous province.<\/p>\n

Ms. Jones was joined on Monday by Jane Philpott, the former federal health minister and medical doctor who is spearheading the province\u2019s efforts to revive primary care. <\/p>\n

Dr. Philpott is a proponent of reforming primary care so that it works more like the public school system, with patients enrolled in local health homes based on where they live. <\/p>\n

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Dr. Jane Philpott has been spearheading Ontario’s efforts to revive primary care.Chris Young\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Health homes or primary care teams \u2013 as the Ontario government calls them \u2013 usually feature a mix of physicians, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, social workers and other health providers, a model that reduces the burden on physicians alone. <\/p>\n

The Ontario government announced in June that, after an earlier call for proposals, it was spending $235-million on more than 130 new and expanded primary care teams, with an eye to attaching 300,000 new patients to regular care. <\/p>\n

\u201cThese teams are the front door to our health system,\u201d Dr. Philpott said. \u201cThey are led by family doctors or nurse practitioners, and they provide timely, comprehensive care that makes a real difference.\u201d <\/p>\n

Ms. Jones announced the new callout less than a week after an arbitrator settled the outstanding terms of a four-year agreement between the Ford government and the Ontario Medical Association, which represents doctors across the province. <\/p>\n

Kingston \u2018health homes\u2019 put Jane Philpott\u2019s vision of primary care to the test<\/a><\/p>\n

Ontario Physicians will receive a 7.3 per cent bump in fees over the next three years, on top of a 10 per cent increase in the first year of the deal. <\/p>\n

The agreement also modernized a popular payment model for family doctors. <\/p>\n

The changes, including compensating family doctors for behind-the-scenes work such as charting and reviewing test results, are designed to persuade more doctors to practice office-based, cradle-to-gave primary care. <\/p>\n

Family physicians have long pointed to a heavy administrative burden as one disincentive to working full-time in a traditional primary-care practice. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Lack of access to comprehensive primary care is a problem across Canada, according…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,84,392,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-175963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}