Quebec's Family Medicine Groups in numbers.

A note on the vocabulary

Quebec calls these clinics groupes de médecine de famille, abbreviated GMF. There is no official English name, and the ministry publishes only in French, so this page uses "Family Medicine Group" and "FMG" in the prose and keeps GMF, GMF-U and GMF-AR wherever they are the actual designations. Clinic names are left in French because that is how they appear in the source.

How many FMGs are there in Quebec?

The MSSS workbook dated December 31, 2024 names 386 Family Medicine Groups, spread across 16 of Quebec's 18 health regions. Together they follow 5,280,255 registered patients.

At the same date, 6,070,296 Quebecers are registered with a family physician, which is 71.9% of the population eligible for the provincial health insurance plan. In other words, roughly 87% of Quebecers registered with a family physician are registered in a GMF. The GMF is not one primary-care model among several in Quebec, it is the dominant one.

Two caveats on the count. The file lists the GMFs that appear in the RAMQ registration report, which is not exactly the same thing as the list of GMFs accredited by the minister on a given date. And a single GMF may operate several sites, so the number of places where GMF practice happens is higher than 386.

FMGs by health region

Montréal and Montérégie together account for 39% of all Quebec FMGs. At the other end, Nord-du-Québec has exactly one.

Health region	FMGs	of which GMF-U	Registered patients	Median size	Median adherence
Bas-Saint-Laurent	13	1	157,802	12,434	84.8%
Saguenay et Lac-Saint-Jean	14	1	206,411	14,751	88.0%
Capitale-Nationale	34	6	493,891	14,161	88.8%
Mauricie et Centre-du-Québec	28	3	363,799	11,830	90.6%
Estrie	26	2	330,612	10,972	94.4%
Montréal	95	10	1,343,840	11,541	89.1%
Outaouais	17	1	267,980	14,958	94.5%
Abitibi-Témiscamingue	6	–	86,603	15,290	86.0%
Côte-Nord	5	1	45,172	8,768	83.0%
Nord-du-Québec	1	–	6,771	6,771	90.6%
Gaspésie et Îles-de-la-Madeleine	6	–	58,533	9,598	83.2%
Chaudière-Appalaches	19	1	276,519	14,716	88.7%
Laval	18	2	292,884	14,019	90.6%
Lanaudière	23	2	326,025	13,926	93.2%
Laurentides	25	1	297,950	9,745	93.0%
Montérégie	56	5	725,463	12,276	93.7%
Quebec	386	36	5,280,255	12,631	90.9%

How big is an FMG?

Half of Quebec's FMGs hold between 8,785 and 17,055 registered patients. The median is 12,631, the mean 13,679. The distribution is stretched to the right, which is the signature of a handful of very large urban groups pulling the mean above the median.

Measure	Registered patients
Smallest	2,966
10th percentile	6,332
25th percentile	8,785
Median	12,631
Mean	13,679
75th percentile	17,055
90th percentile	22,810
Largest	38,398

Here is the full distribution, cut along the registration bands the GMF Program itself uses to assign a level (see below).

Registered patients	FMGs	Share	Distribution
0 to 5,999	31	8.0%
6,000 to 8,999	72	18.7%
9,000 to 11,999	80	20.7%
12,000 to 14,999	65	16.8%
15,000 to 17,999	52	13.5%
18,000 to 20,999	33	8.5%
21,000 to 23,999	24	6.2%
24,000 to 26,999	12	3.1%
27,000 to 29,999	6	1.6%
30,000 to 32,999	6	1.6%
33,000 to 35,999	3	0.8%
36,000 to 38,999	2	0.5%
39,000 and up	0	0.0%

The five largest FMGs in Quebec, all above 30,000 registered patients:

• GMF Plateau Marquette, Estrie: 38,398 registered patients
• GMF Clinique médicale Elna Décarie, Montréal: 36,132 registered patients
• GMF-U de Herzl, Montréal: 34,890 registered patients
• GMF Clinique médicale Pierre-Boucher, Montérégie: 34,356 registered patients
• GMF Elna DDO, Montréal: 33,923 registered patients

GMF, GMF-U, GMF accès-réseau: three designations

The three terms come up together and mean different things.

GMF

The groupe de médecine de famille has been Quebec's primary-care organizing model since 2002. Family physicians work there alongside clinical nurses, social workers and other professionals, serving a patient population that registers voluntarily.

GMF-U

A university GMF is a GMF that also holds university recognition for teaching and accreditation in the family medicine residency program. It is the current designation for what used to be called a UMF. The MSSS file contains 36 of them, which is 9.3% of all GMFs, with a median size slightly above the rest. In scheduling terms this is the hardest case: residents, supervisors and teaching half-days all have to be planned on top of clinical work. That is the subject of our page on GMF-U scheduling software.

GMF accès-réseau

The GMF-AR, previously called a super-clinique, is a designation added on top of GMF status. It targets access for the general population, prioritizing people not registered with a family physician, over extended hours and with integrated access to diagnostic services. The registration workbook does not flag GMF-ARs, so this page cannot count them.

The 12 levels of the GMF Program

An FMG is not funded at a flat rate. The GMF Program assigns it a level from 1 to 12, based on the number of weighted registrations recorded at its annual review. That level determines the professional resources the health establishment attaches to the group.

Level	Weighted registrations	Clinical nurses	Social workers	Other professionals	Total FTE
1	6,000 to 8,999	1	1	1	3
2	9,000 to 11,999	2	1	1	4
3	12,000 to 14,999	2	1	1	4
4	15,000 to 17,999	3	2	1	6
5	18,000 to 20,999	3	2	2	7
6	21,000 to 23,999	4	2	2	8
7	24,000 to 26,999	4	2	2	8
8	27,000 to 29,999	5	3	2	10
9	30,000 to 32,999	5	3	3	11
10	33,000 to 35,999	6	3	3	12
11	36,000 to 38,999	6	3	3	12
12	39,000 and up	7	4	3	14

"Other professionals" means, depending on what the group needs, a dietitian, kinesiologist, physiotherapist, occupational therapist, respiratory therapist or psychologist.

This is the most useful table on the page for anyone building a schedule, because it puts a number on something nobody counts spontaneously: a level 12 FMG staffs 14 allied-health professionals in full-time equivalents on top of its physicians, against 3 at level 1. Each one has their own days, rooms and time slots, and they share the same offices the physicians use. Scheduling difficulty does not track the number of physicians, it tracks the number of people to place and the number of constraints linking them.

One warning: do not read the size table above as a count of levels. A level is computed from weighted registrations, which uplift vulnerable patients, social and material deprivation and complex needs. The published registration workbook gives a plain count of registered patients. The two do not coincide, and a given FMG can sit at a higher level than its raw size suggests.

The adherence rate

The taux d'assiduité measures the share of a registered patient's visits that actually happen at their own GMF, rather than elsewhere in primary care or in an emergency department at triage priority 4 or 5. It is the indicator used to judge the access a group provides, and it feeds into GMF Program funding.

As of December 31, 2024 the median rate is 90.9%, against a mean of 90.0%. The spread stays wide: 10 FMGs fall below 80% and 29 exceed 95%, with an observed minimum of 42.2% and a maximum of 96.7%.

An adherence rate is largely decided by slot supply: a patient who cannot get an appointment at their own clinic goes elsewhere. It is an access measure before it is a measure of individual performance, and Synchro does not compute it.

Method, limits and sources

Source. Ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux, "Données sur l'accès aux services médicaux de première ligne", workbook Art72_2024-12-31-Perm.xlsx, published under section 72 of the Act respecting access to family medicine and specialized medicine services. The per-GMF tables come from RAMQ report 8. The GMF Program level data comes from the MSSS Document de précisions, Programme GMF et Programme GMF accès-réseau.

Frequency. The MSSS states the data is updated quarterly. In practice the most recent permanent workbook covers December 31, 2024, alongside preliminary data for March 31, 2025. We re-check the source page and republish whenever a new workbook appears. Last verified 2026-09-09.

Limits worth knowing before citing these figures.

• The GMF-U count relies on the designation appearing in the published name ("GMF-U" or "UMF"). The workbook carries no separate flag, so a university GMF whose name omits it would not be counted here.
• The registered-patient count is not the weighted registration count used to set a GMF's level. The bands in the distribution table are there to show the shape of the distribution, not to assign a level to any particular GMF.
• The share of registered patients who are in a GMF compares a total counted at the place of registration against a total counted at the place of residence. The two bases differ slightly, so treat that percentage as an order of magnitude.
• GMF accès-réseau cannot be identified in this workbook, and neither can physician counts, addresses or opening hours.
• Nunavik and Terres-Cries-de-la-Baie-James have no GMF in the file: services there are organized differently.

Reuse. The data is public and belongs to the MSSS. The full table is available as CSV, with French column headers as in the source: code_rss and region for the health region, code_rts and rts for the territorial service network, gmf for the clinic name, patients_inscrits for registered patients, taux_assiduite for the adherence rate, and universitaire for the GMF-U flag. If you reuse these figures, cite the MSSS as the source. Found an error, or a figure that has changed? Write to [email protected] and we will correct it.

The full list of 386 Quebec FMGs

Every GMF named in the MSSS workbook, ordered by health region then by name. University GMFs are marked. The table scrolls.