Finding new family doctor

Since you're in Ontario, your only real options are to use Ontario Health Care Connect, or to cold call doctors' offices.

We used Ontario Health Care Connect when we moved to Ottawa in 2019 and it took 8 months for them to connect us with a doctor, who happens to be a 30 minute drive away. We make periodic phone calls to closer offices to try and find a family practitioner closer to us, but after 13 months of trying we still haven't had success.

Thankfully we found a pediatrician for our (at the time) 1 year old within a month of moving, within a few minutes' drive of our home, by making calls to a few pediatricians. My understanding is that it's generally easier to find a doctor for infants and pregnant women.

Lovable wrote: ↑ Wow, 8 months for health care connect? I was hoping it would be easier. The other thing too is the distance required for the drive and the fact that the doctor may not even be a good one... Yikes! Guess I will continue to cold call.

We actually didn't like the option given to us, and not just because of distance. When we called to make an appointment after being "paired" with him, we couldn't get a hold of his office to make an appointment. His office called us and left a message. We called back ... and left a message. Then the office called us, left a message, and said "this is the last time I'm calling. We have a lot of patients on our list and can't take the time to track you down.". We left 2 more voicemails and sent 2 emails before we finally gave up.

So we called Health Care Connect, complained, and registered again.

That was over a year ago and Health Care Connect still hasn't called back with a new match.

Thankfully that doctor we were originally paired with moved to a different practice. I managed to get an appointment after he moved, and had a chat with him. He moved because of how crappy the receptionists and admins were at the old office. So it wasn't all his fault, I guess. He seems like a nice guy and his new office seems good, but they're just too far away for us.

But at least we have someone, and we only see a doctor at most twice a year - once for a physical, and rarely once for something else. My wife's pregnant, but we're with a midwifery within walking distance of our house, so we don't need to see the GP for her checkups; and my son sees a pediatrician nearby.