A healthy Ontario: Building a sustainable health care system
Report released on June 25, 2019
By Dr. Rueben Devlin, Chair, Premier’s Council on Improving Healthcare and Ending Hallway Medicine
Under Chapter 3: Ten recommendations to improve health care: Integration: Recommendations 1–3
Innovation in Ontario
The Windsor Family Health Team expanded their service delivery through a Team Care Centre (TCC) model, in partnership with the City Centre Community Health Centre. This model serves the rostered patients of 100–125 solo primary care practitioners in the Windsor area, or approximately 200,000 people.
The TCC model provides solo primary care providers with an interdisciplinary team-based, patient–centred approach in mental health diagnosis, and treatment plans for individuals with mental health/addictions and complex care needs. It also increases access to wrap–around services and programs to meet the health care needs of the community.
The success of this model is seen through 100 community physicians providing over 1,000 referrals since September 2018. Patient outcomes have improved, patient satisfaction rates have increased and unnecessary visits to health care providers have reduced. Moreover, mental health patients have experienced enhanced quality of life, and benefitted from improved care coordination and navigation.