It’s always a perk having a pool, gym or parking space in your apartment building. But how about free virtual health-care services? Now, residents in Toronto have access to that niche offering in select rental buildings.
Toronto purpose-built rental developer Fitzrovia has partnered with Cleveland Clinic Canada exclusively for 10 years to offer its virtual care services in three of their Toronto buildings — downtown’s Elm-Ledbury and Waverley, and Parker in midtown — with a fourth building, Sloane, near Yorkdale mall, coming this fall.
“We help provide that essential service and have partnered with a strong health-care provider so that our residents don’t have to go to a walk-in clinic ever again,” said Adrian Rocca, CEO of Fitzrovia.
The intersection of housing and health care is an emerging trend in the rental market. There’s already been an expansion of companies offering privatized virtual-only health care services in Ontario workplaces, with more employers offering them to workers. But now developers are partnering with private health-care companies to offer these services as a perk to thousands of GTA tenants.
Developers say these health-care services improve resident satisfaction, attract new tenants, and help newcomers navigate the health-care system.
They also offer a competitive edge, especially as the rental market faces downward price pressures and rising vacancies.
But further expansion of private virtual-only health care into the rental space doesn’t address the root of Canada’s family doctor shortage, a health-care professional warns, and could detract from finding real solutions in the province’s public health system.
“It’s important to recognize the crisis in primary care,” said Dr. Danyaal Raza, past chair of Canadian Doctors for Medicare, adding that more than two million Ontarians don’t have access to a family doctor. “People are desperate for care. So the question is what do we do about that? And how do we get people good care?”
Developers and private health-care providers partner up
Fitzrovia isn’t the only developer dabbling in the health care space.
For several years, Hazelview Properties has partnered with Maple, a Canadian virtual health-care company, to expand access to essential services for its residents across the country. In the GTA, Maple is available to seven properties — with the program expanding to another building in midtown Toronto this month.
A few years ago, Hazelview formalized its social impact strategy and “engaged with residents on what their socioeconomic needs were, and found that health and wellness was a priority,” said managing partner Colleen Krempulec, head of sustainability and brand.
“As a housing provider we asked ourselves, what more can we do?”
Tenants must sign up to connect with health-care professionals. Residents access services through the Maple platform on a mobile device or computer and are paired with a health-care professional in minutes, Krempulec said.
At Fitzrovia, residents also sign up for the service and have access to nurses who can diagnose up to 120 common ailments. Residents can access the virtual care appointment through their own personal devices or in the “care room” in their building, which has diagnostic tools such as a blood pressure machine and a medical exam kit that can remotely review heart rate and temperature.
To date, 30 per cent of Fitzrovia’s residents have signed up for the health-care services, Rocca said.
Rocca emphasized the service especially helps new immigrants, who typically rent when first moving to Canada and often struggle to access a family doctor.
“We want to do things right and commit to our civic duty as a long-term owner of the building,” Rocca said.
From developers to insurers
At both Fitzrovia and Hazelview, tenants do not pay out of pocket nor is it included in their rent.
Instead, the developers almost act like a private insurer, covering the virtual appointment costs for residents — or in Hazelview’s case, up to a limited number of free appointments.
For Hazelview tenants, depending on the program they have access to, they have anywhere from two to six free sessions with a health-care professional covered per year, Krempulec said. Once a resident has used all sessions available in their plan, they can access care through Maple at their own cost, directly via the platform, a Hazelview spokesperson added.
At Fitzrovia, Rocca said the cost is covered by Fitzrovia.
Joanne Kearney, spokesperson for Fitzrovia, said that just as employers play a vital role in expanding access through health benefits plans Fitzrovia believes it can contribute to the well-being of their communities in a similar fashion.
Around 30 to 60 per cent of Fitzrovia residents are newcomers to Canada and are subject to the mandatory three-month waiting period before qualifying for OHIP coverage, she said.
“This is before even starting the search for a family doctor, which can take several months to many years. Other residents, such as international students, may not be eligible for OHIP at all,” she said in a written statement.
Expanding private health-care comes at a cost
The Canada Health Act prohibits people paying for medically necessary care delivered by a doctor or in a hospital. That leaves many areas open for private payment — such as paying a nurse practitioner for primary care — that have allowed private virtual health clinics to grow, with people signing up on their own or companies acting like private insurers.
Private virtual-only walk-in clinics are growing rapidly as they’re less expensive to operate with minimal overhead costs, said Raza, who’s also a family physician at St. Michael’s Hospital.
There’s a risk that virtual-only privatized services are drawing family doctors, nurse practitioners and other professionals away from publicly funded, in-person care that “needs to be the backbone of our system,” he added.
Having publicly funded primary care teams in all communities across the province is where investment and focus should be, he said. That means people are never more than a 15-to-20-minute journey from a health-care clinic with physicians, nurses and specialists they can access with ease.
Raza said in his practice he uses a combination of in-person and virtual care, but when people use virtual-only care it can lead to higher rates of emergency department use.
“Primary care in Ontario is at a crossroad,” he said. “We don’t want to blame individuals (such as tenants) for doing what they can to get care. However, we do need to hold organizations and decision-makers accountable to make sure at the system level we make the right decisions, not the wrong ones.”
Krempulec said Hazelview’s partnership with Maple is not politically motivated.
“We absolutely believe in Canada’s universal public health-care system,” she said.
“Offering our residents virtual care through Maple is not about undermining that principal. It’s a complementary option, especially helping those who face a barrier to access to the publicly funded system,” she said.
Fitzrovia’s Kearney said the service can be vital for some residents, given the Ontario public system is scaling back its support for virtual care.
In 2022, a new agreement in Ontario between doctors and the province came into effect that adjusted the fee codes for virtual care, with the aim of reducing the use of specific “walk-in” virtual visits and to encourage virtual care in conjunction with in-person care.
“For individuals with physical disabilities or those facing mobility challenges, this is a serious setback. On-demand virtual care addresses some inequities by making access to care easier for those who have difficulty getting to a clinic, or difficulty finding a brick-and-mortar walk-in clinic,” Kearney said.
