We will enable health human resource planning by managing physician practice data in our registries
The Medical Council of Canada (MCC) is the trusted keeper of physician credentials, a role that continues to expand in the current health care environment. The increasing demand for source verification services and the recently launched National Registry of Physicians (NRP) has reinforced the need to manage physician data centrally and securely to inform licensing and health care decisions in Canada.
Action plans
- Integrate and onboard all medical regulatory authorities (MRAs) into the NRP to ensure comprehensive participation and value.
- Augment the NRP with strategic data to provide critical insights for workforce planning and help prevent future crises. This will support physician mobility across provinces and territories by streamlining licensure processes and, in turn, improve health care access for patients across Canada.
- Engage the NRP Data Governance and Advisory Committee to align data and reporting strategies across registries to ensure generalizability, integrity, and accuracy.
Key performance indicators (KPIs)
- The number of provinces and territories onboarded into the NRP measures the progress towards fully launching and operationalizing the NRP. It tracks the integration status of all provinces and territories.
- The number of Certificates of Professional Conduct (CPCs) integrated into the NRP is a KPI that tracks how many CPCs are registered in the NRP, as authorized by provincial and territorial regulators. It also measures the time required for each integration to assess efficiency and comprehensiveness.
Progress towards this objective
To deliver on this objective, we continue to foster nationwide collaboration through the NRP and are working on enhancements to the physiciansapply.ca platform to better enable efficient physician licensure and mobility. We are working closely with our partners and other interested parties to align our data management practices with the highest standards of operational excellence, allowing for continuous improvement. This approach ensures that our data supports informed decision-making and meets the needs of the entire health care community. Recent updates include:
Data governance
- The inaugural meeting, in June 2024, of the Data Governance and Advisory Committee (DGAC), which oversees the NRP, set the foundation for ongoing collaboration, data integrity, and unified reporting strategies across the NRP. This committee meets on a quarterly basis, with all provinces and territories represented.
National Registry of Physicians
- All Canadian provinces and territories have committed to providing data to the NRP, with seven provinces now fully onboarded and making regular updates, and one in the process of onboarding. The NRP Working Group continues to operationalize the NRP.
What's next?
Onboarding additional MRAs to the NRP
- The MCC continues to work with MRAs to onboard provincial and territorial physician data and increase information exchanges using the NRP.
- The MCC continues to work with MRAs to integrate CPCs into the NRP.
Develop future functionality of the NRP
- Working with the NRP Data Governance Advisory Committee, the MCC will plan and deliver future functionality and use cases for the NRP so that it may better serve in cases of emergency planning, locum service readiness, and multijurisdictional recognition, among others.
- Extend NRP access to other health organizations, enabling health sector planning with evidence-based data.