Primary Care

Digital tools promise better care. Are they delivering on the Quintuple Aim?

If primary care is increasingly digital, are these tools helping us move toward better patient experience, health outcomes, lower costs, improved clinician well-being and greater equity?

When digital tools reshape primary care: What happens to the 4Cs?

The question is not whether digital systems can do more. It’s whether we are designing and governing them to protect the core functions of primary care – or allowing them to add load in ways that quietly undermine care.

When technology becomes the work: Why primary care must confront the digital burden it created

Primary care in Canada is in the middle of a digital paradox. Electronic health records and digital tools were introduced to make our work easier, safer and more coordinated.

To improve primary care, ‘think globally, act locally’

Primary care is the foundation not only for individual but also for collective health, and we must mobilize more family physicians to improve it.

Are we the problem?

"Systems would visibly fail. And perhaps – like the family that finally sets the boundary – they would be forced to build what they’ve never needed to, because we were always there."

Co-payments ‘a step backward’ for refugees and the health-care system

It’s imperative we protect access to health care for refugees and asylum claimants. There is no compromise when it comes to equitable health care.

Encouraging signs but retention and recruitment essential for Ontario to achieve primary care goals

The Primary Care Act and the vision that positions primary care as the foundation of Ontario’s health system is the bold thinking our system has needed for many years. But now is the time to act on retention.

Transparency is not risk free. But neither is restricted access

Patients should not have to file formal requests to understand their own care. They should not have to wait months to read information that already exists. And they should not be excluded from conversations that shape their health and lives.

Bill to criminalize forced sterilization sparks debate over reproductive justice and medical practice

Bill S-228, which would criminalize forced and coerced sterilization with an up to 14-year prison sentence, is on its way to becoming law. But is it a step in the right direction? Experts weigh in.

The paperwork burden weighing on Canadian physicians

What’s the prescription for physician burnout? Intervention is required to simplify non-clinical workflows and alleviate the administrative burden on physicians.

Ontario’s health-care system was built for a different era but to quote our PM: ‘Nostalgia is not a strategy’

Ontario’s health-care system retains extraordinary potential. Realizing it will require abandoning outdated assumptions and committing to structural reform.

What Canada can learn from Costa Rica’s primary care system

Costa Rica is a middle-income country that is achieving health outcomes that far exceed what its resources would predict. But what is at the heart of their success?

From awareness to accountability: The attention is nice but what comes after Heart Month?

Each February, Heart Month brings renewed attention to cardiovascular disease. Awareness matters. But when the campaigns end, an uncomfortable question remains: what changes?

The AI we get may not be the AI we need: Why physician-led governance is essential

AI holds enormous promise. Yet without clear, focused, physician-led and patient-centred governance, the AI we get may not be the AI we need.

We’re building primary care teams. Who governs them?

As Canada builds team-based primary care, the governance question must be asked at both provincial and federal levels: What does each profession need within its own regulatory framework to prepare members for team-based primary care?

In rural Canada, burnout looks different

Burnout in Northern Ontario is not simply about being tired. It is about being stretched across distance, across roles, and across unmet needs. It reflects the broader challenge of delivering care in a vast country with uneven resource distribution.

Picking my own lane

Effective system design will take creativity, innovation and sustained change management. In this moment, when the old paradigm is clearly broken, I am more committed than ever to the hard work of generative thinking and deep engagement.

Is there a doctor in the House (of Commons)?

If solutions lie in policy and politics, what about physicians? Is there a role they can play on the political field?

Sick notes are slowly being banned but much more is needed to reduce administrative burden

Doctors across Canada agree: the crushing paperwork in medicine is unsustainable. Together, we can create a better system that truly supports both patients and the physicians who serve them.

‘Dangerous outcomes’: The limitations of BMI as a diagnostic tool

Researchers, clinicians and advocates have been raising concerns about the BMI, saying it is not a comprehensive indicator of health and using it can have disastrous results, especially for racialized populations.