East Toronto's Answer to Unattached Patients: The Primary Care Navigation Clinic and a Digital Front Door

East Toronto Health Partners (ETHP) — the OHT serving 300,000 East Toronto residents through more than 100 partner organizations — was one of the 12 OHTs Ontario selected to "accelerate" in 2023. Its primary care work shows why: rather than waiting for unattached residents to find their own way, ETHP built the machinery to find them a permanent home.

A clinic whose job is to make itself unnecessary

The East Toronto Primary Care Navigation Clinic (PCNC), opened at Michael Garron Hospital in partnership with Flemingdon Health Centre and TNO – The Neighbourhood Organization, gives unattached patients short-term primary care — typically two to six visits — while staff work to connect each patient to a permanent, long-term provider. It's one of several "primary care access points" in a larger ETHP-led project aiming to connect 11,000 East Toronto residents to primary care by summer 2026, and all residents by 2029.

“Right now, we know that there are tens of thousands of East Toronto residents who do not have access to primary care.”

— Dr. Catherine Yu, Chief, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Michael Garron Hospital, and Medical Director, Flemingdon Health Centre

Neighbourhood-first, like the best OHT work

ETHP's strategic plan commits to team-based primary care within "integrated primary health neighbourhoods" — the same neighbourhood logic behind Kingston's Health Homes. The OHT's long-running partnership at Health Access Thorncliffe Park, connecting primary care with wraparound social services in one of Toronto's Neighbourhood Improvement Areas, shows the model applied to some of the city's most underserved communities.

The digital front door is now on paper

In early 2026, ETHP co-authored a peer-reviewed digital roadmap for primary care access — describing how an OHT can connect primary care, community, and hospital partners into a "scalable, sustainable, and human-centered digital access ecosystem" in response to the Primary Care Action Team's call for innovation. For booking-infrastructure nerds (that's us), it's one of the clearest published statements yet that OHTs see digital access — not just clinic capacity — as the binding constraint on attachment.

The through-line across the PCNC, Thorncliffe Park, and the roadmap: attachment only counts if patients can actually reach their new team. Navigation gets a patient a provider; an every-patient booking front door keeps them connected.

Sources & further reading

• Michael Garron Hospital — New Primary Care Navigation Clinic opens to connect patients without a family doctor
• East Toronto Health Partners — About us (accelerated OHT)
• East Toronto Health Partners — Our priorities (integrated primary health neighbourhoods)
• A Digital Roadmap for Primary Care in East Toronto (PubMed)
• East Toronto Family Practice Network — OHT workstreams (Health Access Thorncliffe Park)