The Middlesex London Primary Care Network (MLPCN) is:
- A distinct entity within the Middlesex London Ontario Health Team (MLOHT). Formally funded by Ontario Health.
- A unified team of local primary care physicians and nurse practitioners that lead, co-lead, or support primary care strategic work in conjunction with MLOHT. We are your legitimate and powerful advocates in the healthcare system.
- Operationally connected to, and strategically aligned with, Recruitment and Practice Facilitation as primary care supports.
What we do
- Locally: we focus on improving care experiences, fostering community, and providing support for our members.
- Provincially: our voice advocates for broader system change and influences OHT decision making. Our seat at the table puts primary care in the driver’s seat to help determine what beneficial change looks like.
Learn more about our priorities and vision for the future
More on Primary Care Networks in Ontario
From the Ontario Government:
“In OHTs: The Path Forward (2024), the valuable role that primary care providers play in OHTs was re-emphasized and the Ministry (of Health) and Ontario Health committed to supporting their involvement in OHTs. Your Health: A Plan for Connected and Convenient Care (2023) noted that every OHT will include primary care providers organized in a Primary Care Network (PCN) to be part of decision-making and to improve access to care for patients.
Guiding Principles
The following key principles provide a frame for the vision, objectives and common functions set out in this document.
- Joining a PCN is voluntary, but strongly encouraged. Participation should be driven by a strong value proposition and be built on local relationships to implement a quintuple aim approach that will improve patient care, primary care provider experiences, and enable system transformation.
- PCNs will build and enable clinical leadership with the capacity to deliver on its core functions. PCNs should work to ensure that clinical leadership represents primary care providers broadly, but at a minimum includes family physicians and nurse practitioners.
- PCNs will adopt a health equity lens including in its clinical priorities, with a focus on the needs of equity-deserving populations including First Nations, Inuit, Primary Care Networks in OHTs: Guidance Document – 5 Métis and urban Indigenous, Francophone, Black and other racialized communities, 2SLGBTQIA+, and other underserved and underrepresented communities.
- As the OHT matures, its PCN will be critical to supporting the local primary care sector, including through connecting primary care providers to information and clinical tools that are useful and supportive to a primary care provider in the network.
- PCNs will work within OHT collaborative governance structures to ensure a strong primary care clinical voice and perspective is a critical part of local OHT decision-making.
- Over time, every OHT across the province will be required to have a PCN that organizes family physicians, nurse practitioners and other primary care providers to the common vision, objectives and functions outlined in this document.”
Primary Care Network vision and mission
Initial Clinical Priorities
“OHTs and PCNs will focus on an initial core set of urgent clinical priorities, as identified below. Over time it is expected that these initial clinical priorities will change to continue to meet the needs of patients, families and communities.
- Improve access and attachment to comprehensive primary care, with a focus on equity-deserving populations (e.g. Indigenous, Black, Francophone, etc.).
- Implement integrated chronic disease prevention and management strategies, with a focus on equity-deserving populations, as above.
- Implement additional local priorities as defined by the OHT and PCN.
OHTs and their PCNs will work with Ontario Health to identify specific initiatives and outcomes that will positively impact patient care and experience related to these priorities.”
Read the full Guidance Document for Primary Care Networks (2024).