About us – Ottawa OHT-ÉSO | The Ottawa Ontario Health Team

A nurse in scrubs talks with a woman on crutches in a waiting room, while another patient fills out paperwork nearby. The scene conveys a supportive healthcare environment.

Our Approach

The Ottawa OHT-ÉSO helps ensure patients have coordinated care. We support health providers to work together. This includes hospitals, doctors, and home and community care providers. Together, we organize services to deliver equitable, accessible, integrated and patient-centred care. The Ottawa OHT-ÉSO does not directly provide patient care.

Many factors impact our health, including social, economic, and cultural. Our diverse community includes people of all races, faiths, abilities, sexual orientations, and gender identities in urban, suburban, and rural settings.

Our focus is on underserved and equity-deserving populations. These are the people and communities facing more care barriers. Team-based care is central to our approach. These healthcare teams have a range of roles, from primary care to diabetes care to addiction, mental health, and more. The Ottawa OHT-ÉSO is one of the health teams in the area previously known as the Champlain Region. In 2019, 58 Ontario Health Teams replaced the former health regions. These teams recognize that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work in healthcare. Ottawa has unique needs, whether cultural, ethnic, geographic, or economic.

What is an Ontario Health Team?

Introduced in 2019, OHTs are a model of integrated care delivery where groups of health care providers and organizations work together as a team to deliver a full and coordinated continuum of care for patients. OHTs are comprised of multiple sectors, including primary care, home and community care, community care, hospitals, mental health substance use health and addictions, and patients, families and caregivers. The goal of OHTs is to provide better, more integrated care across the province. Ontario Health Teams are based on attributed populations – residents may live anywhere and be associated with a given OHT. OHTs do not have defined boundaries.

View our Governance Structure

Ontario Health's Information on OHTs

Our population

The Ottawa OHT-ÉSO is one of the largest Ontario Health Teams in the province. We serve a population of over 700,000—from Bayshore in the west, along the Kichi Zībī (Ottawa River) to Orléans in the east, and south to Manotick. The Ottawa OHT-ÉSO serves a diverse population from both urban and rural Ottawa. Health equity is our driving principle as we strive to ensure that all residents in our region have access to the high-quality care they need, at the right place, and at the right time to reach their health goals.

Our populations of focus are:

All residents without a primary care provider, with a focus on young children and historically underserved communities;
Older adults living with frailty;
Adults living with chronic health conditions like diabetes, heart disease, or COPD; and
Adults experiencing mental health, substance use health, and addiction challenges and housing instability or homelessness.

Learn about health equity

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Meet our team members

Our team

The Ottawa OHT-ÉSO “backbone team” is small and led by our director, Monica Armstrong. We work in collaboration with our 65+ partner organizations and Primary Care Network to provide leadership, engagement, project management, system transformation, performance measurement, data analytics, and digital health support.

Meet our team members

Resources

We help community well-being by connecting providers, individuals, and families with tools that improve health.

Find essential resources

Key initiatives

Our initiatives focus on promoting improving quality of life, and ensuring that older adults receive coordinated care and support.

What we’ve done

Contact us

We welcome you to contact us if you have a question, concern or would like to provide feedback and additional thoughts.

Get in touch

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