The News
Ontario Budget 2026 confirmed that the Health Care Connect waitlist has been reduced by over 87% — more than 204,800 people connected to a primary care provider. In 2025 alone, 330,000 Ontarians were attached through the province’s Primary Care Action Team, led by Dr. Jane Philpott. The target: every Ontarian connected to primary care by 2029.
Alongside this, Windsor Regional Hospital’s Hospital-to-Home program received $2 million in provincial funding and enrolled 242 patients by March 2026 — exceeding its target — and is now expanding to Erie Shores HealthCare and Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare.
MAP’s Take
That 87% waitlist reduction sounds like a success story for the system. It is also a signal that the province is actively placing patients — and that means new roster additions are coming to FHO practices whether practices have planned for them or not.
Here is the problem we see repeatedly: a physician approves a new roster addition through Health Care Connect and does not think much of it. Then three more come through. Then six. Within a quarter, the patient panel has grown and the practice’s administrative infrastructure — appointment slots, billing processes, recall systems — has not kept pace. The revenue from per-patient FHO capitation goes up on paper. The operational strain goes up faster.
Hospital-to-Home compounds this. Patients transitioning home faster from WRH, Erie Shores, and Hotel-Dieu are re-engaging with their family physicians sooner than they used to. That is a good thing for outcomes. It is also more volume landing at your front desk, often with complex post-acute needs, on short notice.
None of this is a reason to close your roster. It is a reason to check whether your current setup can absorb growth without quietly degrading the experience for the patients you already have — and your own work-life balance.
The Takeaway
The province’s rostering push is the best news primary care has had in years. The practices that benefit most will be the ones that walked into it with a plan: capacity analysis done, billing processes clean, care team roles clear, and a handle on what their current FHO panel actually costs to serve versus what it pays. If you have not done that math lately, now is the time.
