More than 9,000 residents across Grey and Bruce counties have successfully secured a primary care provider over the past 18 months, marking a significant step forward for regional healthcare access.
Grey Bruce Ontario Health Team Executive Director Lindsay Johnston delivered the encouraging update during a presentation to Grey County council at the most recent meeting, highlighting steady progress toward the Grey Bruce Ontario Health Team’s broader objective of connecting all local citizens to regular care by 2029.
"We actually have now attached over 9,000 local residents to primary care, so a physician or nurse practitioner," Johnston explained. "We are now 40 per cent of the way there to our larger goal of attaching over 23,500 Grey Bruce residents to primary care."
Johnston acknowledged that while expanding access remains a continuous challenge, seeing the patient numbers move in a positive direction provides tremendous momentum for local health administrators.
Earlier this year, the organization completely cleared its Health Care Connect waitlist for community members who had registered prior to 2025.
"It was just over 5,400 Grey Bruce residents on the Health Care Connects list, and we were able to either attach them all to primary care locally, or if they had moved or already been attached, we cleared them from that waitlist," Johnston continued.
Rather than facing multi-year delays like in the past, residents are now benefiting from a dynamic roster system that routinely processes and reduces waitlist numbers as new clinical capacity opens up. Building on this momentum, leadership has established a new interim target to connect an additional 9,000 individuals to primary care throughout the current fiscal year, having already brought 1,700 patients onboard since April, despite waiting on approved provincial funds to actually reach local care providers.
Although those promised government dollars are officially green-lit and expected soon, the timeframe to meet this specific intake milestone has been adjusted to the end of June 2027. Local expansion efforts have been largely propelled by $7 million in permanent base funding awarded to the regional health team since late summer of 2025, which pays for additional salaried clinical positions that enable existing doctor groups to roster larger patient panels.
To fully realize their goal of attaching 9,000 more patients during the current period, health officials estimate they will require roughly $4 million in supplementary support, with two additional provincial funding application windows anticipated prior to 2029.
