A Family Health Team, or FHT, brings together different health care providers, often under one roof, to work collaboratively to provide high quality patient care.

Most Family Health Teams will consist of doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners and other allied health care professionals.  

Government funding is available to subsidize some of the salaries, rent and other costs associated with the FHT. 

A Family Health Organization, or FHO, is a group of 3 or more primary care physicians who work together with a focus on preventive care and improving access to primary care in Ontario.  There are many benefits to a FHO, such as guaranteed predictable income, shared after hours coverage, flexibility in how and when you provide care, and quite often conversion to a FHO results in an increase in your monthly income. 

The FHO is a blended capitation payment model whereby physician income is determined through the following components:

• Base Rate and Comprehensive Care payments
• Fee for Service (FFS)
• Premiums and Bonuses
• Continuing Medical Education funding (CME)
• Other FHO payments and special bonus opportunities

Cirrus offers support to physicians in the form of medical clinic leasing and subsidized relocation, medical practice management, conversion from fee for service payment models (FHN / FHG) to blended capitated models (FHO / FHT), EMR analysis and contract negotiation, Human Resources planning and customized medical financial analysis and reporting.

Cirrus services include:

• Finding the right medical location
• Negotiating your medical lease agreement
• Family Health Organization (FHO) transition
• Family Health Team (FHT) transition and operations support
• Organizational planning and operations support
• Partnership and cost sharing solutions for physician groups
• EMR assessment and contract negotiation
• Access bonus optimization

Cirrus Consulting Group has over 15 years of experience working with primary care providers. We pride ourselves on understanding the complexities of your demanding careers. Our goal is to “let doctors be doctors” by enabling you to spend your time doing what you do best – providing quality patient care, while we handle the operational and business side of the practice. When you start considering retirement plans Cirrus can work with you to ensure your practice is operationally sustainable, financially healthy and effectively positioned for your work to slow down.

There are four factors that we consider to be important to every practice: accessibility of the new location, demographic makeup of the area, having the right neighbours who will increase traffic to your practice, and getting a lease agreement which aligns with the needs of your practice and your own personal objectives. Cirrus will strive to find a location that satisfies these requirements so they meet the needs of your practice both now and in the future.

Cirrus offers many other services that are not FHO specific, so not being part of one is not a problem. If you are interested in learning more about the benefits of joining a FHO, we can also help you find out more about the benefits of making the transition.

Testimonials from past clients can be found at http://www.cirrusconsultinggroup.com/testimonials