In 2001/02, the 14% of Ontario general practitioners and family physicians (GP/FPs) and 2.5% of Ontario specialists who were practising in rural areas cared for almost 20% of the Ontario population. [...] Implications 1. The rural South is facing greater challenges than the rural North While the physician to population ratio for GP/FPs in the North is approaching that of urban centres, the ratio for rural communities in the south lags well behind. [...] This suggests that recent policy decisions to establish the Northern Ontario School of Medicine and a Windsor campus of the University of Western Ontario may help improve rural GP/FP supply in those regions of the Province. [...] The goal of this report is to provide a nuanced understanding of the communities in these areas, and the general practitioners and family physicians (GP/FPs) and specialists who work there. [...] The other advantage of using an HHR-based definition of rural is that it ensures that the communities are similar in the characteristic of interest—in this case, the availability of physician services.