What is a Family Health Organization?
A Family Health Organization, or FHO, is a primary healthcare model in Ontario introduced in 2006. A FHO consists of a group of doctors working together to provide patients with readily accessible and comprehensive healthcare with a focus on illness prevention.
For FHOs to be effective, enrolled patients commit to receiving their primary health care from their primary physician or, if unavailable, another doctor in the FHO. The FHO, in turn, commits to providing care during regular and extended office hours and patients also have access to a nurse-staffed Telephone Health Advisory Service (811 or ontario.ca/health811).
What does this mean?
When you enroll with a FHO physician, you agree to contact that physician when you need primary medical advice or treatment. You are making a promise to do so unless there is an emergency or you are traveling away from home.
The preference is that you do not go to a walk-in clinic. The government of Ontario compensates FHOs for having extended evening and weekend hours to ensure patients have access to urgent medical care. When a FHO patient visits a walk-in clinic or other medical clinic not associated
with our FHO, OHIP charges our clinic for the entire cost of your visit.
More importantly, if you go to another clinic not associated with our FHO, it becomes much more difficult to receive records of your visit. This makes it more challenging to offer you the comprehensive ongoing care you deserve.
If you continue to have to use walk-in clinics (for example, if you have moved far away, or if your schedule is more hectic than we can accommodate), then enrolling might not be right for you. Please speak with us if this is the case.
Details of the Rouge Valley Family Health Organization
The Rouge Valley FHO consists of 20 doctors working in 9 different clinics in the area. See our doctors and locations here.
We offer After Hours Services every Monday to Thursday from 5-8pm, and an additional 6-9 hours over the weekend. After Hours Services rotate through the different clinic locations based on which doctor is covering that day. More details here.
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