New Chair and Team Will Help Connect Every Person in Ontario to Primary Health Care Within Five Years

To continue to implement Your Heath: A Plan for More Connected and Convenient Care, Dr. Jane Philpott will serve as chair and lead a new primary care action team with a mandate to connect every person in Ontario to primary health care within the next five years.

“Through record investments, our government is proud that Ontario has the best rate of access to regular health care providers in the country, including family doctors and primary health care teams,” said Sylvia Jones, Deputy Premier and Minister of Health. “There’s no one I trust more than Dr. Philpott with her considerable experience to keep moving us forward and get us across the finish line of connecting everyone in the province to more convenient primary health care within the next five years. Doing so will have enormous benefits for people’s health and wellbeing, as well as the province’s health care system by reducing pressures on emergency departments.”

According to the Canada Institute for Health Information, 90 per cent of people in Ontario have access to a regular health care provider, the highest rate in Canada. Dr. Philpott’s work will build on the considerable investments the province is making, including in primary health care teams and the largest expansion of medical schools in over a decade, to close the gap for the remaining 10 per cent of people who want to connect to a primary health care team.

Dr. Philpott explains that “Ontario can build a health system where the guarantee of access to a primary care team is as automatic as the assurance that every child will be assigned to a public school in their neighbourhood. Our goal will be for 100 per cent of Ontarians to be attached to a family doctor or nurse practitioner working in a publicly funded team, where they receive ongoing, comprehensive care and people can access that care in a timely way.”

Starting December 1, 2024, in her new role, Dr. Philpott will oversee this action-oriented group supported by the Ministry of Health that will enable the connection of every Ontarian with primary care services within the next five years. Drawing on the best-in-class Periwinkle model designed by Dr. Philpott and colleagues in the Frontenac, Lennox and Addington Ontario Health Team with input from other primary health care leaders across the province, she will provide and implement an action plan ensuring the Minister of Health can further expand team-based primary health care across the province. This plan will include ensuring more convenient access to existing teams with better service on weekends and after-hours, reducing the significant administrative burden on family doctors and other primary care professionals and improving connections to specialists and digital tools.

Dr. Philpott currently serves as the Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Queen’s University and director of its School of Medicine. She previously held a number of senior roles in the Government of Canada, including Minister of Health, Minister of Indigenous Services and President of the Treasury Board, and spent more than 30 years in family medicine and global health. Dr. Philpott was previously appointed as a special advisor to the Ontario government to support the design and implementation of the Ontario Health Data Platform.

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