Special Report: Health system neglects northern patients by design: Doctor – CBC

Veteran physician says his northern patients don’t receive care other Canadians take for granted

Mar 05, 2018

Canadians like to think they have one of the best health care systems in the world — and that it’s there for everybody, no matter what. But Dr. Mike Kirlew, a family physician based in Sioux Lookout, Ont., and one of the few doctors who works in the remote Indigenous communities in the northernmost part of the province, says that’s not true.

“My patients do not receive anywhere close to a comparable level of care that other Canadians would enjoy. They just don’t,” Dr. Kirlew says. “That’s the height of un-Canadianness.”

Originally from Ottawa, Dr. Kirlew moved to Sioux Lookout, Ont., after medical school. He only expected to stay a few months — 10 years later he’s fallen in love with the North.

He says health care in Canada is supposed to be based on equality and fairness, but these days he wonders if that’s just something Canadians like to tell themselves.

Read More: http://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/north-health-care-system-problems-1.4523140