Enhancing Community Care for Ontarians (ECCO) – A Three Year Plan - 2012

Ontario’s nurses call on government and stakeholders to collectively strengthen our publicly-funded, not-for-profit health system and make it more responsive to the public’s needs, easier to navigate and more efficient and cost-effective. To make this happen, focus must be placed on advancing primary health care for all through health promotion, disease prevention, social and environmental determinants of health and community care. Equally important are changes that enable nurses and all other regulated health professionals to work to their full scope of practice, a commitment to reducing structural duplication, and advancing system integration and alignment.

The ECCO model proposes that interprofessional primary care organizations, such as community health
centres (CHC), nurse practitioner-led clinics (NPLC), Aboriginal health access centres (AHAC) and family
health teams (FHT) expand their reach and role over the next three years, with the support of a
temporary LHIN-led primary care transitional secretariat to organize local geographic primary care
networks.