Kingston ‘health homes’ put Jane Philpott’s vision of primary care to the test

By the time Dorothyanne Brown got the call from a new primary-care clinic in Kingston, she was getting desperate. The 65-year-old former nurse, who has multiple sclerosis, diabetes and osteoarthritis, had been without a family doctor for more than four years after moving to the eastern Ontario city from the east coast. Managing her own medical care with occasional walk-in clinic visits and virtual nursing services had become, she says, “an absolute nightmare.”