20 years of support, innovation, and collaboration in primary care
Our journey
From our start in 2006, our organization — the Calgary West Central Primary Care Network (CWC PCN) — has been a non-profit committed to supporting family doctors, patients, and our community. Family doctors who join our membership create the foundation of our PCN, growing from about 60 doctors in the very beginning to a 600-doctor strong membership in 2026.
As a PCN, we worked alongside our members to adapt, innovate, and grow, supporting the patient-doctor relationship and evolving our programs and services to meet the primary care needs of our community.
Nearly three-quarters of a million patient appointments reflect how our teams, services, and programs contributed to our members and community over 20 years. While every patient we saw has their own meaningful story, this timeline tells our PCN’s story. How we started in our early years, built on that foundation, adapted to COVID-19, and evolved as an organization to support doctors and enhance primary care. Please read on to explore our journey, contributions, and accomplishments through the years.
Our story is really a story about relationships between patients and their family doctors, between doctors and the teams who support them, and between our PCN and the community we serve.
Everything grew out of those relationships, and they remain the reason we do this work."
— Christopher Cameron,
Executive Director
2006-10
Our early years
2011-16
Building on our foundation
2017-20
Enhancing our work
2021-26
Our latest chapter
Our early years
We had no idea how big the PCN would grow and how incredibly useful it would be to patients, doctors, and the healthcare team — all starting with a handful of us making calls from a colleague’s family room with ideas to help patients and doctors.”
— Dr. Chris Gorrie,
Family doctor and founding member
The start of our PCN
The kickoff
The very start: Five doctors working the phones together to recruit other family doctors to join the application for a partnership that created our PCN.
The foundation
Support for our members was at the heart of our early days — and continued to be year after year. Members could initially receive assistance to start practices, and this practice support would grow over the years to medical education, online tools, and more.
2006
Our beginning
Established August 1
83
Family doctor members
by the end of 2006
Building on our foundation
It’s humbling to reflect on the ways that our day-to-day work has contributed to improved care and access for many thousands of patients of our physician members."
— Cory Smith,
Director of Community Services
& Care Transitions
Appointments
when needed
Seeing your family doctor is often best — but not always possible. To help, we revamped our after-hours program where our members or Health Link could refer people for evening or weekend appointments at one of our clinics.
Unlike walk-in clinics and ERs, our program always sent a visit summary to the patient’s family doctor. In the years ahead, we’d consolidate to one clinic, adapt the program to add daytime appointments to our evening and weekend options, and collaborate with other PCNs to offer people a choice of citywide locations.
1,000+
After-hours appointments
in first half of 2011
Help from new teams
Your family doctor is likely who you think of for primary care, but a team can help, too. For the right expertise at the right time, we started teams of professionals like nurses, social workers, and mental health professionals in 2012 that would evolve with time.
Our new care teams worked out of the members' clinics, our clinic, or a mix of both to provide doctor-led, collaborative care.
49
Healthcare professionals
in 69 clinics of members
Enhancing
our work
I have seen a focused effort to strengthen engagement across our organization through the creation of our Employee Engagement Committee and the introduction of our Patient Experience Survey. These initiatives provide valuable opportunities to listen, learn, and act on the feedback of both our team members and the patients we serve.”
— Helen Cooper,
Primary Care Registered Nurse
Upping engagement
and service
2017 marked the start of our post-appointment patient experience survey, more support for older adults, and a dedicated team for members' questions, input, and information to enhance their understanding and involvement with our PCN.
We would go on to establish our volunteer-based Patient Advisory Council to collect additional patient perspectives on our work, with a volunteer from the council also sitting on our Patient Safety Committee with our people and Medical Director. For our teams, we began our Employee Engagement Committee to promote a positive work culture and team building.
In 2017, we also collaborated with Alberta Health Services to help homebound older adults with doctor-led teams making home visits. Alberta Health Services fully took over this program in 2023, with it becoming an extension of Home Care.
Our existing older adult assessment team would also change in 2018 with services to patients of all members from nurses who assessed patients in their homes in addition to the clinic-based team.
~500
Responses to our first
patient experience survey
Adapting for sustainability,
new objectives
Having grown to nearly 500 members, we changed our membership model to provide sustainable services from our care teams and centralized programs and more fully meet the new objectives for PCNs: Supporting the Patient's Medical Home, transitions of care, health needs of the community, and accountable governance.
Doctors on our Board of Directors recommended changing the model and contributed to its planning. Doctors in our wider membership were involved in focus groups, a survey, and consultation meetings.
The seven PCNs in the Calgary area had a long history of working together and began developing a shared plan and small team in 2018 to coordinate their collaboration on priorities like the opioid crisis.
Formally launched in 2019-20, the plan and team streamlined PCN cooperation just in time to support the response to COVID-19. Shared planning and work continued in the years that followed, with our PCN becoming banker for the zone’s projects.
450+
Family doctor members by 2018
COVID-19: Worldwide shockwaves
"Everyone really came together during such an uncertain time."
"From nurses to MOAs, clinic coordinators, management, and physicians — we all supported
each other.”
— Doris Mercado,
Licensed Practical Nurse
"There was a shared sense of purpose"
"— people stepping up, supporting one another in every way possible.”
— Jo-Anna Timbang,
Clinic Coordinator
"Despite the uncertainty, it was incredibly rewarding"
"to see how our efforts helped maintain connection and care for patients during such a difficult time.”
— Julie McCool,
Manager of Access
& Attachment Services
Our coordinated response
Throughout the pandemic, our PCN was part of a coordinated strategy for primary care in the Calgary area that led to the lowest hospitalization rate of patients with COVID-19 in Alberta. We also started a COVID-19 e-newsletter that curated information specifically for primary care for our PCN that was later expanded to all PCNs in the Calgary area.
With enhanced safety protocols, our PCN’s clinic cared for people with COVID-19 who did not have a family doctor and were referred to us by Alberta’s Medical Officer of Health. Our clinic also continued to see patients who needed help for a variety of needs within 24 hours but could not get in to their doctor or did not have a doctor.
Going virtual for patient care
The pandemic sped up our work on virtual care, with our nurses, social workers, and mental health professionals switching primarily to digital-first care with in-person appointments when necessary.
After a few months, our team for older adults resumed full in-person services, and our social workers once again made home visits.
Virtual appointments were also a key part of our increased support for mental health during the pandemic. Through a single-session virtual care program, our nurses with proven mental health care experience helped people and connected them to resources.
Supporting doctors' health, wellness
To safely see their patients, doctors needed Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). So our PCN collected orders from our members for the face shields, gowns, and KN95 respirators available from AHS and helped distribute them.
We also offered our members access to our virtual appointment platform so they could see their patients virtually.
For their wellness, we began an award-winning monthly e-newsletter of new wellness resources, webinars, podcast episodes, and interactive virtual sessions for family doctors from reputable organizations. We continued it for four years before a drop in new content no longer required a separate e-newsletter.
Connecting health records, professionals
Even while responding to COVID-19, we began a new program to assist members with joining the provincial platform (called CII/CPAR) for sharing information across a patient’s care team through Alberta Netcare.
Our knowledgeable personnel supported doctors and clinics with formalizing panel processes — confirming the family doctor-patient relationship and tracking it in their clinic’s electronic medical record (EMR) system — a critical requirement for CII/CPAR. Then they supported members with the preparation, registration, and implementation of CII/CPAR.
Our latest chapter
I am incredibly proud to not only be a member of CWC PCN and to have had the opportunity to work directly within the [PCN] clinic, but also to have had the distinct honour of serving as a Medical Director for the past seven years. Witnessing the inner workings of our network has only solidified my belief that the CWC PCN stands out as a true leader."
— Dr. Rachel Han Savoie,
Medical Director and family doctor
Adding, enhancing programs to fill gaps
Family doctors are on the frontline of our health system and know the barriers and gaps. So, based on their input, we started programs to offer nutrition counselling and physiotherapy to people who could otherwise not get the help they needed due to cost.
The two programs focus on helping people with conditions identified by our members and where we can make the greatest difference within our resources. After careful monitoring, we expanded both to more conditions in the next two years to offer more support within our means.
To efficiently benefit the most people, our health information professionals began using provincial guidelines and patient data to identify screening projects applicable to the largest number of a member’s patients for outreach. Members also selected their own projects.
Our care coordinators then worked with the patients to schedule appointments, update charts, and gather information when needed.
91%
of dietitian patients strongly agreed or agreed that they are better prepared to deal with daily challenges
93%
of physiotherapy patients found the care they received “definitely” helpful
An evolving organization
Primary care in Alberta is changing again, and we are ready. We are approaching this change with more intention, stronger evidence, and greater clarity than ever before. We know what our members and patients need from us, and we have the people and the discipline to keep delivering it."
— Christopher Cameron,
Executive Director
Celebrating 20 years of care
Robust team-based care
Since our early years, we have grown our teams of health professionals to now include dietitians, nurses, physiotherapists, psychologists, social workers, and a pharmacist who help patients and can refer patients to each other for the right care at the right time. We also have additional teams helping to coordinate appointments, information, screening outreach, and improvement work.
Together with our clinic-based services, they collectively support our members and patients with expertise and teamwork. From after-hours care to programs for mental health, older adults, chronic disease, and more, our PCN has continually worked to improve our team-based care and will continue to do so for a healthier future.
Celebrating 20 years of care
Fostering inclusion
After more than a decade of working with the Tsuut’ina Nation to support patients with culturally sensitive care, we transferred management of the Tsuut’ina Clinic we started in 2007 to the Tsuut’ina Health Centre in 2021 so their community’s needs could be addressed by those who understand them best while remaining a supportive partner. We went on to provide our teams with Indigenous-related training, resources, and events, as part of ongoing learning and reconciliation. We also started our diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging initiative to identify and remove barriers, promote fairness, and strengthen belonging for team members, patients, and partners alike.
Celebrating 20 years of care
Looking outward
to improve
To continuously improve the quality and safety of our services, we chose to begin participating in Accreditation Canada’s Qmentum program — first becoming Accredited in 2021 and achieving Accreditation with Commendation status in 2024.
Accreditation is an independent, internationally recognized evaluation system. It is an ongoing process that verifies what we are doing well and identifies areas for improvement. Being accredited means a third-party (Accreditation Canada) assessed our organization, and we met or exceeded current healthcare standards.
"In my experience, that willingness to honestly assess our work and look for ways to improve is one of our PCN's greatest strengths."
— Alicia Marchtaler,
Manager of Corporate Governance
Celebrating 20 years of care
Formalizing enhanced processes, engagement
Frameworks are more than a resource — they are also a way to systematically think and work through concepts. From our first two in 2020, we have consistently developed and revised frameworks over recent years to provide guidance for ethics, improvement and safety, risk management, data, communications, and engaging members and patients in our projects for consistency and accountability across our PCN.
We also repeatedly improved our internal policies, controls, training, and tools for safety, finances, data, and more. Along with member engagement, we also started an advisory council of our team members in 2022 to further our decision-making with diverse perspectives from across our teams.
Overall, we have seen our member satisfaction scores and the number of our team members who feel positively connected to our PCN steadily increase in recent years.
10/10
rating by over half of respondents
to our member satisfaction
survey
2026
9/10
employees are very positively connected to our PCN
2024 and 2025 Employee Engagement Surveys
Celebrating 20 years of care
Additional external recognition, certification
Starting in 2021, we were selected as one of Alberta’s Top Employers for six straight years. We also began a six-year streak of recognition from Canada’s Safest Employer Awards during which we were named an Excellence Awardee in the safest public sector/non-profit employer category five times and winner once.
But we did not stop working to get better. Over the years, we upgraded our benefits plan, took in team member feedback and acted on it, and stayed focused on safety. For instance, in 2025 we pursued and received a Certificate of Recognition — proof that our health and safety management system meets or exceeds provincial standards — and implemented a new action plan for the yearly audit.
"So much has changed since I was hired in 2009, but the factors that keep me here have not. It’s important to me to work for an organization that puts patients first, and I have found that in the CWC PCN."
— Jill McWilliam,
Clinical Practice Lead
& Primary Care Registered Nurse
Testimonials
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In the spirit of reconciliation, we acknowledge that we work, play, and live on the traditional territories of the people of the Treaty 7 region in Southern Alberta, which include the Blackfoot Confederacy (comprised of the Siksika, the Piikani, and the Kainai First Nations), the Tsuut’ina First Nation, and the Stoney Nakoda (including the Chiniki, Bearspaw, and Goodstoney First Nations). The Calgary area is home to the Métis Nation of Alberta, Districts 1, 4, 5 and 6.
Our 20th anniversary