Rostering New Patients Online: A 2026 Playbook for Ontario Clinics

Ontario's Primary Care Action Plan aims to connect everyone in the province to primary care by 2029. For clinics, that means a wave of attachment: new panels, expanding rosters, and thousands of patients moving off Health Care Connect wait-lists. The clinics that roster efficiently will grow; the ones that roster by phone tag will drown in voicemail.

The meet-and-greet bottleneck

Most practices attach patients through a first 'meet-and-greet' visit — and coordinating it is the bottleneck. Done by phone, each attachment takes multiple calls, callbacks, and manual chart setup. Done online, the patient books the meet-and-greet themselves under your rules: eligible appointment types, correct duration, right provider, intake forms completed before they arrive.

Two front doors, one schedule

The key design is tailored intake for rostered vs. new patients. Returning patients see their normal booking flow. New patients see an attachment stream — screening questions, demographics, consent — that writes clean data into the EMR and books only the appointment types you've opened to them. Both streams share one live schedule, so there's no double-booking risk.

Running intake alongside daily volume

New clinics face a specific version of this: roster fast without starving same-day access for the patients you've already attached. Slot templates handle it — reserve a fixed daily allotment of meet-and-greets, release the rest to routine and same-day care, and adjust weekly as your panel fills.

Don't forget the subsidy

Ontario's OAB subsidy program applies to qualifying online booking solutions, including Empower Health — which makes attachment infrastructure effectively free for many practices. We supply the documentation.

Sources & further reading

• Ontario — Primary Care Action Plan: 1-year progress update (Health Care Connect & attachment data)
• Ontario — Call for proposals: Interprofessional Primary Care Teams
• FLA OHT — How Health Homes are connecting more people to care teams