The “Patients First” Act is the Ontario Ministry’s strategic plan to improve health care in Ontario.
Connect to the details in the links provided:
This plan focuses on four key objectives:
- Learn more about your health care options and where they are
- No family health care provider? HealthCareConnect can help you find one
- Use MedsCheck for help with your medication
- Health Links
Connect: Connect services – delivering better coordinated and integrated care in the community, closer to home.
The foundation has been laid to enable the home and community care sector to meet the needs of today’s population with an enhanced focus on seniors and chronic disease management. Find out more:
- Community Health Centres: promoting and protecting your family’s health
- Community Care Access Centres: your gateway to home care, community and long-term care services
- Supporting seniors: Home, community and residential care services
- Public Health: supporting and protecting the health of Ontarians
Inform: Support people and patients – providing the education, information and transparency they need to make the right decisions about their health.
For Ontarians, health is also about more than the care they receive from providers. It is about living a healthier life, avoiding getting sick and learning about good ways to manage illness when it happens. Creating a culture of health and wellness will support Ontarians in making educated, informed decisions about their care.
Helpful resources and tools
Quit Smoking
Active Living, Healthy Weight
Invest in Staying Healthy
- Get the flu shot
- What you need to know about HPV
- Strokes can be prevented
- Your blood pressure and you
- Screening for cancer saves lives
- Your mental health matters
Protect: Protect our universal public health care system – making evidence-based decisions on value and quality, to sustain the system for generations to come.
Our universal health care system belongs to the people of Ontario. Ontarians fund it and depend on it for their health and the health of their children. With an aging population that will have a growing need for health care services, maintaining a sustainable healthcare system means controlling costs and targeting funding on preventing illness and improving results for patients. Examples of upcoming improvements:
- A Patient Ombudsman will be appointed to help people who have an unresolved complaint about their care at a hospital, long-term care home or Community Care Access Centre.
- Ontario will now require more public reports on how the health system is performing and how patients are being treated, including mental health, wait times, public drug programs and public health.
- A healthcare system that puts patients first requires the input and participation of patients. We will continue to expand how patients are engaged throughout the health care system.
For more information on Ontario’s plan for changing and improving Ontario’s health system see the Patients First: Action Plan for Health Care.
