2010-11-23 MOHLTC’s Health Care Options campaign to raise awareness of FHTs

As mentioned in the 2010-11-09 Members Only update,  “Health Care Options” ads  are now running on TV and radio, following up from Premier’s Nov.1 announcement.  The ministry has launched a public education campaign to raise awareness of the many health care options available to Ontarians. Their research has shown there are low levels of awareness of new models of care, so the objective is to increase the level of knowledge and understanding of what Family Health Teams, Nurse Practitioner led Clinics, Urgent Care Centres etc. do.  The ministry feels it is getting good results so far, with over 3,000 visits a day to the health care options website. The Health Care Options campaign consists of television, newspaper and online advertising.  The television advertising will run until early January and the online advertising will appear until the end of March. The call to action in all of the advertising is to visit the Health Care Options website for more information. The website includes short videos and explanations of each of the health care options. A half-page ad appeared Saturday morning (November 20, 2010) on page A22 of the Globe and Mail.  In the ministry’s words: We chose to profile Family Health Teams in a very deliberate manner because our quantitative and qualitative research showed very low levels of awareness of this model of primary care amongst Ontarians; this includes people who are enrolled in Family Health Teams.  We felt that it was important to educate people about this and other new models of care so that they could get a sense of how the overall health care system is changing to meet people’s needs in the future. A number of AFHTO members noticed that, while the ad drew attention to the different health care professionals brought together in FHTs, doctors were omitted from the list.  The ministry assured AFHTO this was an oversight that is being fixed for future ad insertions which will appear in community newspapers.  The ministry also welcomed AFHTO’s offer to provide feedback on future advertising about FHTs.