About

Clinic capacity changes constantly. A family doctor could be opening up their capacity one month but reducing their intake the next. This volatility motivates the creation of an up-to-date directory that employs a number of strategies.

The first of which is automated voice calls. AI voice agents phone clinics directly and ask whether they are accepting new patients. This approach is mainly used for initial outreach or for clinics that had not been verified by crowdsourcing for many months. Because agents can work in parallel, agents that cost a few cents can re-check hundreds of clinics on a rolling schedule.

The second method is crowdsourcing. All users who are directed to a clinic on Physician Finder’s map are given the contact details of the office. After calling and inquiring about capacity, we present a form for the user to report the updated status on that clinic's listing. This utilizes the call the user was going to make anyways and helps reduce the need to call the same clinic many times over and distract time from staff.

The last method involves the public scraping of clinic websites, practice listings, and public registries. These are monitored for changes that indicate a panel has opened or closed.

The combination of these three methods has created a database of 548 verified clinics and has helped hundreds of Canadians find a family doctor.

Ontario has committed $3.4 billion to connect every resident to primary care by 2029. Our work runs in parallel to make the supply of care providers more accessible to Canadians.