We're thrilled to welcome Dr. Robert Campbell, Rebecca Graff-McRae, and Andrew Longhurst as our esteemed panellists for the discussion. Dr. Danyaal Raza, CDM’s Past Chair, will moderate the discussion.

From coast to coast, provinces are increasingly outsourcing elective surgeries to private, for-profit clinics. However, evidence from across the country is increasingly showing that relying on for-profit care to reduce wait times and control costs may, in fact, be doing the opposite.

Dr. Robert Campbell is the principal investigator of a new study published in the CMAJ, demonstrating that low-income Ontarians were less likely to access cataract surgeries at private, for-profit clinics despite increased public funding for these procedures in independent surgical centres.

In Alberta, despite the provincial government's ongoing efforts to contract private delivery to reduce surgical wait times, there has yet to be a sustainable, long-term reduction in these waits. Rebecca Graff-McRae highlighted this in an op-ed published in the Calgary Herald:

"The investment of public dollars to enable a private, for-profit delivery stream did not achieve either of its most basic objectives: increasing surgeries and reducing wait times."

Andrew Longhurst has written extensively on this issue in British Columbia. Check out his publication, "The Concerning Rise of Corporate Medicine: Public Contracts with Corporate Clinics Top $393 Million Over the Last Six Years, Including Surgical Centres Engaged in Unlawful Extra-Billing."

Register for the webinar at this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_QLvQIZDzS0-Qcgpk4eSE6w#/registration