Medical service in Canada is quite different from Korea as it starts from an appointment with a family doctor or walk-in clinic. You get diagnosed by a doctor and he or she may request you for additional exams such as blood test, X-rays, CT, MRI, cancer test or transfer you to specialists. Your doctor can also prescribe medications when required. We have two volunteering family doctors for a medical consultation program, and they diagnose patients, prescribe medications, and transfer to other specialists for additional examinations. Also, our radiologist volunteer with a portable UT scanner provided great help for pregnant and patients who need imaging examinations.

It is available either on Saturday and Sunday morning, or Sunday afternoon at our office, because they are currently working in their fields and volunteering for Love Toronto on weekends.

Prescribed medications are not covered by medical insurance in Canada. There are some benefit programs for seniors or youths, but adults need to pay for their prescribed medications unless they have a job with health insurance or a private insurance. Your health insurance covers blood/urine tests or imaging examinations free of charge, but you must pay on your own if you do not have the insurance. The examination fees may vary, but it usually can be done within $50 ~ $60 for blood/urine tests. Because imaging examination fees are very expensive, we are providing UT scan with our radiologist instead, but patients may request for additional imaging examination only when it seems necessary. In this case, those additional examinations will be done outside of our office and the patient needs to pay for examination fees.

That will be the most difficult situation for us to help as it can happen for a patient going to an emergency without any health insurance or private insurance. It is against the law in Canada to send a patient back just because he can not pay for hospital expenses. When leaving the hospital, however, the hospital bills you get charged can be thousands of dollars or more. The hospital asks a patient to sign on a payment plan form if he cannot pay for the bill before he leaves. One thing you need to make sure before going to hospital is that you must know when your insurance exactly starts to cover your medical expenses when you purchase private insurance. It usually does not cover any medical expenses for certain periods after the purchase. We actually had a few inquiries from some patients who got into financial trouble because of their new private insurances not covering any of their medical expenses.

You can apply through “Contact us” from our website, e-mail ([email protected]), or phone call (647-346-5688)