Primary care is recognized as the foundation of a high-performing health care system, but many Canadians lack access to a regular primary care provider. In 2024, 17% of Canadian adults and 11% of children and youth did not have access to a regular health care provider.
Primary care challenges are inequitably distributed across the population, with geographic and socioeconomic disparities in access and outcomes. These access challenges have ripple effects throughout the health care system, including increased pressure on emergency departments and workforce burnout.
Healthcare Excellence Canada (HEC) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) are partnering to equip primary care delivery teams across the country with a suite of research and quality improvement supports to help them implement innovative solutions that directly improve access to a regular primary care provider, access to services and quality of primary care.
The partnership
HEC is providing the quality improvement and coaching supports, and CIHR the research supports via the Canadian Primary Care Research Consortium (CPCRC):
- HEC is a pan-Canadian health organization that works with partners to spread innovations, build capability and catalyze policy changes.
- CIHR is the Government of Canada's health research investment agency.
- Care Forward is a pan-Canadian movement supported by HEC and partner organizations that supports primary and integrated care delivery teams across Canada with quality improvement and coaching tools, to help them address challenges, sustain improvements and achieve long-term success that improves primary care access and reduces pressures on emergency departments.
- The Canadian Primary Care Research Consortium (CPCRC) is a national network of researchers, clinicians, decision makers and patients working together to generate solution-focused innovations in primary health care delivery. It is co-led by Drs. Sabrina Wong and Onil Bhattacharyya. Through its pan-Canadian reach and distributed network model, CPCRC partners with more than 40 primary care delivery teams across the country. The network model allows successful innovations to spread quickly and scale up throughout Canada's primary care systems.
Examples of primary care improvement projects with research and QI supports.
University of British Columbia - Digital Emergency Medicine (Dr. Kendall Ho and team):
UBC Digital Emergency Medicine and HealthLinkBC, a trusted source of health information, wayfinding, and navigation services, partner on a virtual physician care solution to empower patients in self-management and connect them to the health system. The digital tool is an access point for patients, enabling an integrated patient journey into and across the health sector. The team is now working on improving access to this service for underserved populations, including rural, Indigenous, and non-English speaking community members.
Petawawa Centennial Family Health Centre (Dr. Jonathan Fitzsimon and team):
This team is using a hybrid approach of in-person and virtual care to provide attachment to a family doctor and to comprehensive, team-based primary care for the most medically complex, previously unattached patients with the highest use of urgent care services.
The impact
With CIHR's $3M research investment and HEC's investment in quality improvement and coaching supports, this partnership will help primary care teams put research-informed innovations into practice with success. The investment will also generate insights into successful primary care innovations that can be spread and scaled for greater reach. The result will be better access to high-quality primary care for Canadians and reduced pressure on emergency departments.
