Rostering

What is rostering?

Rostering in family medicine is a process by which patients register their care with a family practice, family physician, or team. At our clinic, rostering is a process by which you connect in an ongoing relationship with a family physician as your “primary care provider”. Rostering can be contrasted with the “fee for service” model, where you periodically visit a walk-in clinic or family doctor without a direct relationship in between visits.

How are patients rostered at the clinic?

Most patients sign a roster enrolment form soon after connecting with their family physician. After the roster form is signed, the family physician notifies the Ministry of Health that this patient is his/her patient. Being a rostered patient comes with both benefits and responsibilities.

Benefits of Rostering

There are many benefits for rostered patients.

Most important: being rostered means that your family physician is compensated to take care of you, even when you are not actually present for a visit in the office. Consequently, we can afford to spend time ensuring that your testing and general healthcare is kept up-to-date, without depending entirely on your old-fashioned “annual physical”. This model is contrasted with the “fee for service” model, where patients frequently need to come in, even for trivial matters, due to billing restrictions.

As a rostered patient, your physician is able to communicate directly with these multidisciplinary teams (nurse, pharmacist, dietician, social worker and chiropodist) and consultants (e.g., an endocrinologist and psychiatrist). We are able to refer patients for medication reviews, dietary counseling, mental health counseling and foot care.

Furthermore, rostered patients also enjoy access to a number of groups such as the cognitive behavioural therapy groups for mindfulness, anxiety, depression or insomnia, diabetes education, colon cancer survivorship and smoking cession. All of these services are available to our rostered patients at no extra cost.

Requirements for Rostered Patients

For Family Health Organizations and Family Health Teams to function properly, rostered patients must commit to receiving their primary health care exclusively from their family physician. This is the responsibility we ask you to take on as a rostered patient.

We strongly believe that receiving your primary care from walk in clinics and home call doctor services does not provide you with the same quality of care. Walk in clinics and home call doctor services do not send notes, consults, or results to your family doctor. We are committed to the continuity of care and providing you with the most comprehensive care possible. As such, we are respectfully asking our patients to avoid using walk in clinics or home call doctor services. Again, we have reserved emergency appointments every day. Even if your physician is unavailable, we will do our utmost to book you with another physician at the office if the issue is urgent. Please notify us as soon as you have an urgent issue so we can best accommodate you.

Each month your family physician receives an Outside Use report from the Ministry of Health. This report provides your doctor with the names of all patients that have accessed walk in clinics or home call doctor services over the previous month. Under our current agreement with the Ministry of Health, anytime a rostered patient seeks medical care at a walk in clinic or home call doctor service, that fee is deducted directly from your family physician. Therefore, we, as your family physicians, are being financially penalized for such use.

Summary

A Request to Avoid Walk-In Clinics, Home Visit Services, and Other Family Doctor Services…

In summary, our hope is to provide you with good access to care throughout the week. When booking appointments it is better if you can arrange to see your primary physician. If it can’t wait, one of the other doctors in the office would be happy to see you. If you are unwell in the evening or on a weekend, you can go to the North York FHT After-Hours Clinic (or an emergency department).

When patients seek primary care elsewhere (e.g. walk-in clinics, student health, or sports medicine clinics), we are notified by the MOHLTC and we are billed for the costs of these visits. ER visits and specialist visits are not an issue.