Ford government says it will spend $1.8B to connect every Ontarian with primary care within four years

Health Minister Sylvia Jones announced $1.4 billion in additional funding to connect every Ontario resident with a primary care provider within four years.

The provincial government says it has a plan to connect every Ontario resident with a family doctor or a primary care team within four years by spending $1.4 billion more.

The plan includes $1.4 billion in new funding, along with $400 million that was previously approved for primary care.

“With this historic, transformative investment, we can now achieve our goal of connecting every person in the province who wants a primary care provider,” Health Minister Sylvia Jones said.

The government says that its Primary Care Action Plan would make sure that everyone who was on the Health Care Connect waitlist as of Jan. 1, 2025 will be connected to a primary care team by spring 2026.

Some two million more Ontarians would be connected to primary care by 2029 through the plan, the province said, mainly through the addition of 305 more primary care teams.

Primary care teams include a family doctor or a nurse practitioner, as well as other health care professionals such as nurses, physician assistants, social workers, dieticians and others.

The announcement comes the same week that Premier Doug Ford plans to call an early election for the province. Ford said Friday that he plans to visit Lieutenant-Governor Edith Dumont Tuesday to ask that the legislature be dissolved. The election campaign is expected to kick off on Wednesday.

The team crafting the plan is being led by Jane Philpott, a former federal health minister and family doctor. Philpott was appointed by the Ford government back in October to tackle the shortage of primary care in the province.

Asked whether the timing of the update on her work politicizes an important health care initiative, she said that’s not the case.

“There’s nothing political about the work that is going on here,” Philpott said. “It is a plan to make sure that everyone will have access to primary care and that the system will be built for both now and in the future.”

She said she began her work on Dec. 1 and her team has been “working flat out” since then to craft a plan.

She said Monday that as a civil servant, she will continue to work at the job as long as the government of the day wants her to continue doing so.

Asked whether the plan is more of a campaign promise than a government policy given the timing, Jones said that is not the case.

“The plan is in place. That work will continue and we now have the opportunity to build that excitement,” Jones said.

“There’s no doubt that people have been waiting a long time – too long, frankly – to get connected with a primary care practitioner in their community and I am incredibly proud of Dr. Philpott’s team in being able to turn around the proposal and the plan, bringing it to cabinet, getting it approved so quickly.”

The province has maintained that 90 per cent of Ontario residents who want a family doctor are connected to primary care.

Doctors’ groups have disputed that figure and have pointed out that a slew of retirements could quickly drive up the number of doctors and primary care teams needed.

Philpott said that her team has been working with academics and researchers to determine the exact number of people who have yet to be connected and they plan to continue to work on determining an accurate figure.

“On the basis of that, we have built a plan to deliver care to 2 million people,” she said.

Jones said she’s confident in the 90 per cent figure for how many Ontarians are currently connected to primary care.

“As Ontario’s population goes, we will ensure that we have the capacity in place to continue to match individuals – patients, families, young people – with a primary care provider in their community,” she said.

Eventually, Philpott said, the aim is for Ontario to have a system of primary care that mirrors other jurisdictions where more people are connected.

“There are other countries in the world that have 99 per cent or 100 per cent attachment to primary care,” Philpott said. “If you look at those, every one of them has done it according to a geographic model so that if you move to a new community you can enter your postal code into an app or onto a website and it will tell you a choice of primary care providers in your neighbourhood and you will automatically be allowed to go to one of those.

“So that’s the kind of model that we intend to develop here in Ontario. It will take some time to get from where we are now to that model.”