Designing Effective Teams
Team-based primary care is one of Ontario’s most powerful tools for improving access, quality, equity, and sustainability. We’re leading the movement to help teams in Ontario grow coherently, and grow together.
Your Voice. Your Impact.
Every person connected to Ontario’s primary care system has the power to create change. Whether you are part of primary care team, an individual clinician, a partner organization, or a member of the public, there is a role for you in strengthening team-based care primary across Ontario.
Evidence-Based Interprofessional Collaboration
High-functioning, evidence-based teams are the foundation of high-quality primary care. Decades of research and practice experience show that when care is delivered through well-designed, interprofessional teams, patients experience better access, better outcomes, and more coordinated, continuous care.
Models such as the Patient’s Medical Home, emerging Health Home approaches, and Ontario’s Team Primary Care all point to the same conclusion: no single provider can meet the full range of patient needs alone. Effective teams improve preventive care, chronic disease management, and patient experience, while also supporting provider well-being and system sustainability.
What distinguishes effective teams isn’t simply who is on them — it’s how they are designed and supported. Evidence consistently highlights the importance of:
- Clear and complementary roles grounded in scope of practice
- Strong relationships and trust across professions
- Shared accountability for patient outcomes
- Team structures that adapt to community and population needs
A Trusted Home for Team-Based Primary Care in Ontario
We act as an integrator across professions to strengthen how teams collaborate.
AFHTO is your trusted home for team-based primary care. We’re on a mission to build a shared understanding of how team-based primary care actually works: who is part of a team, how roles function together in practice, and how teams can be designed to deliver high-quality, high-impact care, in partnership with professional associations.
AFHTO aims to bring tangible, practical and real world information, tools, and networks together to support implementation and ongoing improvement…..something something….. in other words, not an academic exercise….
Understanding Roles Across the Team
Team-based primary care works best when roles are designed to complement, and not compete, with one another. This illustration is a helpful tool to show how different professionals collaborate around patients, with some roles providing continuous care and others offering specialized expertise as needs arise:
- Patients at the centre of everything we do
- Interprofessional roles working in complementary ways
- Relationships, not hierarchies, driving quality and access
- Flexibility, recognizing that team composition and role emphasis vary by community and population need
Building a Future-Focused System
Team-based primary care is not just a staffing decision. It’s an intentional choice to build a system that not only meets the needs of current patients, but anticipates and responsibly manages future demands on the healthcare system.
Through team-based care, we’re bypassing fragmentation and creating a unified and thoughtful approach to care, where professionals practice at their full potential and patients receive the coordinated, high quality care they deserve.