It has not been easy to work in Canadian healthcare over the past 10 years. The Canadian system has become characterized by a lack of physical infrastructure, no clear planning, and worsening staffing challenges. These problems ballooned during the pandemic but were not sustainable beforehand. For doctors and nurses who want the best for their patients this creates a difficult workplace. We see the poor use of resources, the poor planning, and the effect this has on our patients and colleagues.

As an organization we are strong advocates for socialized, public healthcare. However, it has become increasingly clear that when the public system falls short patients suffer. As a young, motivated group we sat down to look critically at some of the worst access problems in Canadian healthcare and challenged ourselves to do better. We wanted to solve problems from a patient’s perspective. We started by asking “What kind of care would I want for myself or my loved ones?” We sketched out our ideal surgical programs with the most modern science-based solutions, principles of rapid access, easy/timely access to the care team that knows you, continuity of care, and compassion. Our idealized program looked very different from the care were seeing in the Canadian healthcare system. It crystallized things for us to see how far Canadian care has drifted from where it should be.

It should be said that many Canadians have realized this as well. It has been estimated that over 250 000 Canadians leave Canada each year for non-emergency medical care. This creates the extra challenge of patients returning to Canada and being orphaned by a system that isn’t resourced to care for them. Existing medical tourism options don’t live up to our vision. Patients face a buyer beware jungle when searching for international programs and have no help at home when they return. We knew we had to do better.

We started by looking at areas that have had the greatest need with completely open minds. We began interviewing surgeons and hospital administrators around the world. We opened dialogues with common medical tourism destinations and private care providers in the US, Mexico, the Carribean, and Canada. We visited countless programs, reviewed countless processes, credentialling, insurance paradigms, and quality assurance programs. We looked critically at how others have tried to address the Canadian care gap.

One of the most important features of an ideal program is continuity. Having care providers that are invested in your success, know you and your context, and stay with you through thick and thin is a core feature of our idea of good care. We deliberately aim to create a duty of care between patients, their surgeons, and their care team. We want patients to know that they have a surgeon they trust that is invested in their success and available to them close to home should they need them.

We launched our first surgical program in 2021 bringing patients from Alberta to a private surgical centre in Montreal. We brought our nurse practitioner Nicki Armstrong, Dr. Adam Schofield, myself, and four patients on our maiden voyage. To us, this was the culmination of several years of work. Having done literally thousands and thousands of surgeries in my career, it had been many years since I felt nervous before a surgery. This was different. This was the start of something exciting. We were out to prove that we could create something better, from the ground up, and everything had to be perfect - not just the surgery but the whole patient experience. In the end, it exceeded all of our expectations. The surgeries went smoothly, the patients did great; it was a glowing success by any measure.

What we didn’t expect was how much we, as healthcare workers, loved the experience of offering great care. Patients were so happy, so grateful, it made us love our jobs again. Knowing that we had the ability to make the program whatever we wanted was so exciting. We knew that we were on to something amazing and that this was just the beginning. We committed to expanding our model to make it more accesible to patients. We wanted to help our colleagues feel that same excitement of realizing their potential and providing the type care they imagined they could when they started their careers. With this new lense we started seeing the need and the opportunity everywhere - orthopedics, spine, urology, gynecology, and more. It has become our mission to continue identify gaps within the Canadian healthcare system and use our innovative spirit and network to do better for patients.