Ontario on track to meet goal of connecting every resident with primary care: health minister

Ontario Minister of Health Sylvia Jones says the plan is ‘working on the policy side’ to support internationally trained physicians, hiring new nurses, more.

Health Minister Sylvia Jones says Ontario has made progress on its plan to connect more residents with primary care and is now closing in on a target of 300,000 people for the first year of the program.

Jones announced back in December 2024 that Ontario was launching its Primary Care Action Plan, a $2.1 billion plan with the goal of attaching every Ontarian who wants to be connected to primary care by 2028-29.

As of Sept. 30, 2025, the government has connected 275,000 more people to primary care since the start of the plan, officials said Monday.

“As the plan continues to hit its targets and deliver faster access to high quality care, I am incredibly proud of the progress we have made in the first year of our Primary Care Action Plan,” Jones said in a statement.

Former federal health minister Jane Philpott, who is leading the province’s effort, said the government has also cleared 75 per cent of the backlog that existed on Jan. 1, 2025 on the Health Care Connect (HCC) waitlist, though some 91,000 people have since joined the list.

“Under Dr. Philpott’s leadership, we are going to hit this goal,” Jones told reporters Monday.

Philpott said the team had done “an enormous amount of work” to improve the waitlist, including validating all the names on the list and setting targets for how many patients new health teams should take.

“If you or someone you love is looking for a primary care home, please register with Health Care Connect,” Philpott said. “While there’s much more to do, progress is being made on attaching Ontarians to primary care.”

Province says 2 million still to be connected by 2029

When it comes to the number of Ontarians who still need to be connected to primary care, the government says it has revised its latest figure to 1.98 million as of Sept. 2025. The Ministry of Health said it reached that figure through updated methodology devised by INSPIRE-PHC, a network of primary care researchers.

While the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) had disputed the government’s figures in the past, officials say their numbers were based on outdated information from the same organization.

But in an email Monday, the OMA said it estimates there are currently 2.5 million Ontarians without access to a family doctor and maintained that figure is not based on outdated data.

Speaking with CP24.com Monday, OMA President Zainab Abdurrahman expressed scepticism about the province reaching its goals if it relies on Health Care Connect to link people with primary care.

“The big issue that I think we’re having the problem with is some of the focus on Health Care Connect and clearing that waitlist, knowing that it doesn’t capture so many people, knowing that there’s over 2 million – whether we say two or 2.5 million – the 300,000 on something like Health Care Connect does not capture it.”

She also said there is some uncertainty around how fast the funds are flowing to new teams.

“That’s how physicians understand how the attachment numbers are being counted, is really about the funding and how this is going to the teams,” Abdurrahman said. “But it’s not been fully going through, and it’s unclear how many of the announced teams are fully staffed and funded and functioning today compared to planned or approved in principle.”

Government officials said Monday teams that have been selected through a call for proposals that was issued in Sept. 2025 will start to receive funding in spring 2026.

In order to reach its goal, the province says it plans to attach more than 500,000 more people per year to primary care from 2026-27 through 2028-29.

Philpott said the government would be able to adjust to connect more than the rough figure of two million more patients if need be due to unexpected population increases.

She said the government Is using postal codes to determine the areas of greatest need in the province when allocating funding to new family health teams.

Update comes after auditor identified flaws

The province’s update comes just weeks after Ontario Auditor General Shelley Spence said the province appeared to have “no consistent plan” for connecting Ontarians with primary care.

“Our audit concluded that the Ministry, in conjunction with Ontario Health, did not consistently have processes in place to plan and oversee programs and initiatives to improve patients’ access to primary care,” Spence wrote in her report.

Spence found more than half the people waiting to be connected to primary care through Health Care Connect had been waiting more than a year, and that there was also wide variation in wait time on the system. She also found the communications plan for HCC hadn’t been updated since 2015, likely leading to fewer people on the list.

Just around 11 per cent of those who still needed to be connected to primary care were on the HCC list at the time of Spence’s report.

The government accepted all eleven of her recommendations at the time.

Jones’ office said Monday that the auditor’s report did not account for the investments since made through the government’s Primary Care Action Team (PCAT).

Officials could not say when a new communications plan would be rolled out for the HCC.