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 launch of the National Registry of Physicians (NRP) are creating opportunities 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 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.
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. 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 of the Data Governance and Advisory Committee (DGAC) which oversees the NRP, in June 2024, 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 many provinces now fully onboarded and making regular updates. The NRP Working Group continues to operationalize the NRP.
What's next?
Onboarding additional MRAs to the NRP
- We are working with MRAs to operationalize the NRP within regulatory processes with a goal of supporting enhanced and accelerated decision-making for licensure processes, and ultimately providing a complete dataset of Canada’s physicians.
- We continue to work with MRAs to integrate CPCs into the NRP
Develop future functionality of the NRP
- The NRP will be a fundamental building block toward achieving and supporting national mobility for physicians in Canada and improving access of patients to physicians in Canada.
- Potential for a national virtual care pool and a national locum pool, supporting recruitment and retention of physicians in underserved areas.
- Physician mobility and locum to address national emergencies.
- Extend NRP access to other health organizations, enabling health sector planning with evidence-based data.
Continue to improve data quality
- Continue to strengthen data quality oversight of the NRP, including reporting and analytics capabilities to support enhanced regulatory decision-making and health workforce planning.