Academic Family Health Team Policies
The Academic Family Health Team is committed to providing a safe, healthy, secure, and respectful environment through the prevention of violent, abusive and aggressive behaviour.
Zero tolerance policy
We do not tolerate harassment, abusive, disruptive or aggressive behaviour towards staff, other patients or their families in person, by phone or by any means of communication.
Failure to follow these guidelines may impact your ability to remain a patient at our clinic.
Important information for current patients
Enrolment
Our clinic is registered as an Ontario Family Health Organization (FHO), so we ask that our Ontario patients “roster” with us. This involves signing a form identifying the doctors at our clinic as your main health care providers.
Health records
Our team uses electronic health records, so your health information is easy to access when you need to be seen by other health-care providers within our clinic. See Your Privacy and Data for more details. [#UPDATE LINK]
Medical notes
Some of our physicians use Dragon Copilot software to securely records clinician-patient conversations during in-person appointments. Using artificial intelligence, the conversation is converted into medical notes. Once the visit is complete, the clinician reviews and finalizes the notes.
Switching family physicians policy
TOHAFHT is committed to fostering long-term patient-physician relationships and supporting a team-based approach to care. It promotes effective use of resources to maximize physician availability for patient care.
Please note that TOHAFHT does not permit or accommodate switching family physicians.
We do not permit changes to another family physician because:
- Our physicians are qualified to provide primary care to patients of all ages and genders.
- Our physicians work in a collaborative team and are therefore hesitant to contradict a colleague if a conflict arises between a patient's request and their physician's professional opinion or advice. Patients deserve an unbiased second opinion, which can only be obtained through a new physician in a different clinic.
- Taking on new patients requires a significant amount of administrative work to review health history as well as old medical records; allowing switching would increase this administrative work and reduce physician availability for medical care.
- As our physicians work in a collaborative group practice, if you are unhappy with your current physician, there may be instances where you would have to see that physician again should you stay with another physician in the clinic; this has the potential to result in sub-optimal medical care.
Missed appointments
Our region is currently experiencing a serious shortage of family physicians despite a high demand for medical appointments. In order for us to provide access to the highest-quality care possible for all of our patients, we are trying to reduce the number of missed appointments in our clinic.
We know that unexpected things happen that may cause you to not be able to attend your scheduled appointment. Please let us know at least 24 hours beforehand that you need to cancel your appointment. That way we can give your slot to another patient.
When we are not notified of your cancellation at least 24 hours before your appointment, we will charge a fee for a missed appointment. See the service fee listing below for details.
Uninsured services
Not all our services and procedures are covered by OHIP. Examples are prescription refills without an appointment, forms, insurance letters and sick notes. Check the document below for a full list of fees, including fees for appointment fees for Quebec patients.