Final Report: An External Evaluation of the Family Health Team (FHT) Initiative

In 2005, Ontario began to implement the Family Health Team (FHT) model to address cost and quality issues plaguing the health care system and to advance the role of primary care. A defining element of FHTs is their ability to offer enhanced patient access to interprofessional, team-based care.

Based on the results of a five-year evaluation initiative, this final report explores the successes and challenges of the FHT initiative across a series of domains including access, prevention and health promotion, internal and specialist care coordination, patient and family centredness, and support for chronic disease management. The evaluation demonstrated that, despite their young age, FHTs have achieved improvements at the organizational and service-delivery levels. While changes in terms of patient experience and outcomes were not yet evident in all domains, there were some early signs of improvement, particularly in chronic disease management.