Overview

As part of Your Health: A Plan for Connected and Convenient Care, Ontario is continuing to expand community-based surgeries and procedures to connect more people to the care they need faster and closer to home.

Our goal is to make health care more convenient for Ontarians by:

  • expanding the number of community surgical and diagnostic centres
  • cutting wait times for services like MRI and CT scans and cataract surgeries
  • increasing the scope of practice for the province’s highly skilled workforce to give people more options of where they can access they care they need

Surgical and diagnostic centres

For 30 years, community surgical and diagnostic centres (formerly known as Independent Health Facilities) have been a part of Ontario’s publicly funded health care system. These community-based health care centres are licensed to provide a range of OHIP insured services under the Integrated Community Health Services Centres Act (ICHSCA). There are currently over 900 licensees in operation throughout Ontario, with the majority of them providing diagnostic imaging services.

Services offered by community surgical and diagnostic centres include:

  • cataract and other eye surgeries
  • plastic surgeries (OHIP insured)
  • minimally invasive gynecological surgery
  • abortion
  • birth centres
  • dialysis
  • routine diagnostic imaging such as x-ray and ultrasound
  • MRI/CT and PET scans
  • nuclear medicine
  • pulmonary function studies
  • sleep studies

Learn more about community surgical and diagnostic centres.

How to apply to become a community surgical and diagnostic centre

Call for applications

New centres are created through a call for applications process, under the provisions of the Integrated Community Health Services Centres Act (ICHSCA).

A total of 3 calls for applications are taking place to expand ICHSCs for:

  • Orthopedic surgeries 
  • GI Endoscopy procedures (closed)
  • MRI/CT imaging services (closed)

Future calls for applications

We will hold a webinar before the launch of each call for applications to help prospective applicants prepare their application.

Once the call for applications is issued, all details, including eligibility requirements, will be listed on this webpage.

Read through some of the requirements in the Integrated Community Health Services Centres Act, 2023, Section 5 if you’re interested in participating in future call for applications.

Contact

You can contact the Integrated Community Health Services Centres Program by:

  • mail:         
    Ministry of Health
    Health Insurance Branch
    Integrated Community Health Services Centres Program
    49 Place d’Armes, 5th Floor         
    Kingston ON K7L 5J3
  • phone: 613-548-6637
  • fax: 613-548-6734
  • email: ICHSC@ontario.ca

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