How to get on a family doctor's roster
Checked October 2026
Being on a roster means a family doctor or nurse practitioner has taken you on as a regular patient. There are three ways in, and they are not alternatives - run them at the same time.
Health Care Connect is the provincial matching service. Register online through the Ministry of Health portal, or call 811. A nurse called a Care Connector works with local Ontario Health Teams and primary care networks to find a clinician who is accepting patients. When there is a match, referral letters go to you and to the clinician’s office, and the office calls you to book the first appointment. After that visit, you and the clinician decide whether the care continues.
Halton Region keeps a list of physicians accepting new patients, broken out by municipality, including an Oakville section with clinic names, addresses and phone numbers. You call those offices yourself. The same page points to Connected Care Halton’s interactive map and to the Find Your Family Doctor Team at Support House, which offers one-on-one help and interpretation: FindYourDoctor@SupportHouse.ca or 833-845-9355, extension 500.
What to bring
For Health Care Connect you need:
- Your contact information.
- A valid Ontario health card number.
- A mailing address that matches the one associated with your health card.
- Basic health information. It is optional, but the service uses a health questionnaire to set priority, so filling it in matters.
Common mistakes
- Registering and then waiting. Call practices from the Halton Region list while your registration sits in the queue.
- Giving a mailing address that does not match your health card. Ontario requires the two to match.
- Skipping the health questionnaire. Priority goes to people with higher health needs based on what that questionnaire says.
- Registering online when you have used the service before. Previous users have to re-register by phone.
- Expecting the CPSO Physician Register to show who is taking patients. It does not - it gives you contact details, and you phone and ask.
How long it takes
There is no published timeline, and Ontario states plainly that it does not guarantee a clinician will be found for you immediately. Care Connectors match people with urgent needs first. Treat it as a background process that may run for a long time, and in the meantime use walk-in care, a pharmacist, or 811 for anything that comes up.