Social Policy in Ontario

Why Ontario says it’s on track to connect every Ontarian to a family doctor by 2029

Posted on October 27, 2026 in Health Delivery System

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TheStar.com – News
Oct. 26, 2026.   By Megan Ogilvie, Health Reporter, and Kerry Gillespie, Health Reporter

The Ford government says more than half a million people have been connected to a family doctor or primary care team through Health Care Connect.

Nearly two years after promising to fix Ontario’s primary care system, the Ford government says more than half a million people have been connected to a family doctor or primary care team.

Health officials on Monday said this puts the province on track to connect every Ontarian to primary care by 2029 — a pledge made by the Ministry of Health when it launched its Primary Care Action Plan in January 2025.

Since then, the province has committed $3.4 billion to primary care, including creating and expanding primary care teams, opening new medical school spotsand boosting the primary care workforce.

Health Minister Sylvia Jones said Ontario leads the country with nearly 90 per cent of people connected to a family doctor or primary care team. By that accounting, that still leaves roughly 1.8 million Ontarians without access to such care.

“We know there is more work to do,” Jones said.

She said the government has increased the number of family physicians in Ontario by 14 per cent since 2018 and is taking additional steps to increase numbers further by training more doctors and attracting them from other jurisdictions.

“We are making it easier for nurses and physicians to move and practice here in Ontario — with over 2,300 nurses and more than 570 doctors from the U.S. choosing to practice in Ontario in 2025 alone,” Jones said.

The government has added 340 undergraduate seats and 551 postgraduate family medical positions, she said, noting the province is “investing in the largest medical school education expansion in a generation.”

Jones also pointed to progress with Health Care Connect, the provincial program that connects people to primary care in their community. More than 470,000 people have been cleared from Health Care Connect since January 2025, she said, with wait times at their lowest levels in more than a decade.

The province had pledged to clear the Health Care Connect wait-list by the spring of 2026 — and stated last fall it was on track to do so. Health officials did not say Monday why they had not met their own government targets.

Last year, Ontario’s auditor general highlighted issues with Health Care Connect, stating the program was not as effective as it could be, with too few doctors using the service and patients lagging on wait-lists. The findings were released in an audit of the province’s oversight of access to primary care, which at the time concluded the Health Ministry was failing to get more Ontarians a family doctor.

The audit highlighted a lack of provincial co-ordination in physician recruitment, while a separate audit on oversight of medical education found the government had underestimated the number of medical school seats needed to train family doctors. According to the auditor, the province needs 2,000 more family physicians to ensure all Ontarians could be connected to primary care.

The Ministry of Health acknowledged that many long-standing issues with Health Care Connect have been resolved and the tool is now working well to connect patients. As of Oct. 1, ministry figures show that of the roughly 61,000 people on Health Care Connect list, 15 per cent have been waiting more than a year, while nearly 40 per cent have only been waiting three months.

Dr. Adil Shamji, Liberal primary care critic and MPP for Don Valley East, said the Ford government still has a long way to go in solving the primary care crisis, noting that people coming off the Health Care Connect list doesn’t mean they found a doctor.

“Some of them, their phone number has changed, they moved, in some cases they may have died, and they’ve just been removed off the list,” Shamji said. He added the government needs to increase their focus on physician retention, getting nurse practitioners publicly funded and speeding up credentialing of internationally trained doctors.

Research has shown an increasing number of doctors who train as family physicians are fleeing the profession to other areas of practice, including emergency medicine.

Dr. Jane Philpott, the former liberal health minister who was appointed in 2024 by the Ontario government to lead the Primary Care Action Team, said Monday that two rounds of funding have gone toward expanding and creating primary care teams.

So far, more than 300 new and expanded primary care teams will connect some 800,000 patients by the end of the current fiscal year. In 2027-28 and 2028-29, the government is projecting it will be able to attach more patients — some 1.2 million — to primary care teams than has happened so far.

Philpott said those “ambitious targets” come down to clinicians and administrators in the system learning and improving their community outreach.

“We asked them to do more,” Philpott said. “We received proposals for even higher targets and we expect that across the province as the system sorts itself out … we expect our attachment rates to go up.”

https://www.thestar.com/news/ontario-is-on-track-get-everyone-a-family-doctor-or-primary-care-provider-by-2029-province-says/article_2cefd4cd-b9a6-4612-bf90-d0091f225c3f.html

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