With a budget expected in early May and the potential for an election this spring or summer, we need to ensure that MPPs, candidates and senior officials of all of the political parties are well-educated on the value of interprofessional comprehensive primary care teams, and the benefits of expanding access, enhancing value and enabling recruitment of the staff needed to deliver care. Last week AFHTO used the occasion of the 10th Anniversary of the announcement of Family Health Teams to kick off our campaign, “Better Care. Healthier Families. Best Value.” As a result of our work, the Minister of Health also used the event to attribute much of their success in health care to the work being done by family care teams – FHTs, NPLCs and other interprofessional models — in Ontario. In the next week, we’ll meet with senior political officials to encourage them to make the expansion and enhancement of family care teams a priority. We’re also mailing a brochure to every MPP in the province. We need members to help keep up the momentum. We encourage you to book a meeting with your local MPP and election candidates as soon as possible. To make it as easy as possible, we have e-mailed documents to members to support your efforts:
- A slide presentation that you can use to guide your meeting. (Note that we’ve left space for you to insert local successes and challenges).
- A PDF of the brochure (click here) that you can print to use in your meetings or in other ways appropriate to your community.
We have also e-mailed the following two documents. Members can contact info@afhto.ca to receive a copy:
- A key messages document to ensure we’re giving consistent messages across the province.
- A spreadsheet that lists the riding and MPP contact information for each AFHTO member, sorted by member name and by riding.
We’re also scheduling an all-member web meeting to give you an update on Ontario’s political landscape, what we’re hearing in our meetings, and answer your questions. The e-mail was sent out by riding to help members in the same riding to connect and coordinate efforts. AFHTO is happy to help your group coordinate if needed – just contact info@afhto.ca. (Note: Our list of AFHTO members by riding is based on administrative office addresses. Please let us know If your organization operates in more than one riding, or send us the postal codes of your other locations and we’ll work it out for you.) If we are going to protect the improvements we’ve made to primary care in Ontario we need to ensure that more people are aware of the benefits that family care teams bring to patients, government and providers. Please keep us updated on your progress by emailing info@afhto.ca. Sincerely, Keri Selkirk, President (and Executive Director, Thames Valley FHT) Angie Heydon, Executive Director Association of Family Health Teams of Ontario
Leave a Reply