Illustration featuring three healthcare providers with speech bubbles beside their heads: one with a medical cross, one with a computer monitor and one with a house.

Enhancing Integrated Care

Enhancing Integrated Care helps primary and community care delivery organizations strengthen integrated team-based care models, including virtual care, making access easier and easing pressure on emergency departments.

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Moderate effort: Teams are expected to participate in group coaching and learning activities with some additional optional activities.

Around one in five emergency department visits happen because of limited access to primary care. Enhancing Integrated Care brings teams together to share knowledge and implement integrated care approaches that help bolster social and healthcare systems, addressing hospital overcrowding.

In May 2025, Enhancing Integrated Care launched cohort 1, engaging teams from across the country to advance innovative, team-based care models starting in July 2025.

Building on this momentum, cohort 2 is now open for applications, offering even more organizations the opportunity to join this growing movement and drive meaningful improvements in integrated care. Cohort 2 will start in December 2025.

Illustration of a kneeling healthcare provider holding a tablet for an individual sitting in a chair. The tablet is for a virtual healthcare visit with another healthcare provider.

Why join Enhancing Integrated Care?

Become part of a movement transforming healthcare, supported by:

Seed funding up to $10,000.
Expert coaches who help you address challenges, sustain improvements and plan for long-term success.
Proven tools and evidence-informed resources for implementing and measuring what works.
Virtual learning and networking where you can share knowledge, celebrate successes and drive collective progress.
Research support from CIHR-funded researchers may be available to teams in the primary care sector (see Call for Applications for more information).

Participating teams will be supported to pursue their goals while building essential skills in equity, cultural safety, patient engagement and safety. They’ll also explore key topics like quality improvement and working in partnership with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities.

Apply to improve collaboration, access and patient outcomes

Applications for cohort 2 are open from August 25 to October 31, 2025. The offering begins in December 2025. 

Find details, including eligibility criteria, in the Call for Applications.
Explore the Frequently Asked Questions to learn more about whether more than one team can apply, who can be a team lead and more.
Review the data collection and reporting requirements.
Create an account or sign in to the portal to apply.

Apply now

Illustration of three healthcare providers sitting at a table with bubbles containing a medical cross, outline of a head with a heart at the top and a house below them signifying integrated team-based care.

Who should apply?

Those working to improve team-based care in primary and community care settings, such as clinics, hospitals, home care, mental health services, community care, rehabilitation or palliative care.

Eligible teams could also include the following in partnership with organizations that deliver integrated team-based care:

Regional health authorities, provincial/territorial governments.
First Nations, Inuit or Métis health service delivery organizations, First Nations, Inuit or Métis governments/organizations.

What is integrated care?

Integrated care is a collaborative approach where healthcare professionals from various disciplines—such as primary care providers, specialists, allied health professionals, mental health professionals, pharmacists and community and social workers—work together to provide coordinated, patient-centred care. This ensures patients receive the right care at the right time. The goal is to improve health outcomes, reduce service duplication, and lower costs by offering more efficient, coordinated care.

We built relationships and expanded our collaboration. We set up hospital consults with a treatment facility and have seen significant expansion in the availability of addictions medicine consultations. This program provided a venue for collaboration and brought together a group of likeminded individuals and what we have created is significant."

- A participant of Bridge-to-Home, a past program aimed at improving care transitions

What types of projects do teams work on?

Enhanced Integrated Care builds on the success of recent HEC initiatives. These past projects are examples of the type of work that could be further strengthened through this offering:

The Annex (PDF): A primary care clinic in a library offering follow-up and routine care to unattached patients, helping prevent emergency department visits and readmissions.
Enhancing Primary Care Access to Specialist Consultant: Using connected medicine models like RACE™ and BASE™, primary care providers can access real-time specialist advice to improve care planning and timely access.
Carbonear Impact Clinic (PDF): A partnership between an emergency department and family health team to redirect patients to a clinic for acute care, chronic disease management, and attachment to a family doctor.
Integrated Virtual Care (PDF): A virtual care model connecting patients to doctors and team members for virtual and in-person primary care.
Bridge-to-Home: A patient-oriented care bundle to improve safety and support during transitions from hospital to home.
Integrated Virtual Care Framework for Primary Care-Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services (NLHS) Western Zone: A virtual care framework for primary care, incorporating existing frameworks that focus on person and family-centered care, quality improvement and evaluation.
Project ECHO™ Community of Practice Approach (PDF): A virtual training model that builds staff capacity to manage complex dementia cases and avoid emergency department visits.

Expand your participation—and your impact

This offering is part of Care Forward, a larger initiative that provides funding and learning supports to drive impact on four key priorities: expanding access to care and easing pressure on emergency departments, helping more people age where they call home, advancing person-centred long-term care and supporting the health workforce. Teams are encouraged to explore various Care Forward offerings to boost their skills and amplify their impact. Register for Right Care Challenge and explore offerings that are already underway.