"The specialist got back to us...it'll be 12 months..."
You can actually feel the hope burning from your patient's eyes when you tell them they need to wait a year or more to see a specialist. A year of pain, missed work, sleepless nights, lost life.
I’m done “managing expectations.” There is a problem with the current system, and I'm trying to help fix it.
Your referral has been accepted. The approximate wait time is:
⚪️ 1-3 months
⚪️ 6-12 months
✔️ >12 months
⚪️ Other: _____
I receive this exact message in my inbox several times a week. Most surgical wait times exceed 12 months, though occasionally, I’m surprised when it’s “only” 6-12.
More recently, however, a specialist scribbled a handwritten response in the Other field: “7 years.”
Seven years to see a surgeon. Is this a joke?
Why any specialist would accept a referral with that kind of backlog is beyond me.
I’m still in my first five years as a family doctor. But you don’t need to be a grizzled veteran, with a decades-long medical career, to know that the current state of affairs isn't working. And it's only getting worse.
In my practice, the conversations I have with patients about their surgical options now come with built-in warnings. Unless it’s truly a matter of life or limb, patients can expect to wait up to a year just to see a surgeon, followed by another 8–12 months for the actual surgery.
Calling this “managing expectations” feels like the understatement of the year.
Every week, I see multiple patients who feel stuck on surgical waitlists. Timelines aren't clear. They're not sure what they're options are. Many haven’t even secured a consultation appointment, never mind a date for their surgery.
“My pain is getting worse.”
“I’m not sleeping.”
“I can’t function at work anymore.”
“I can’t do anything I used to enjoy.”
Each patient’s story is unique, but they share a common and discouraging theme: they feel they are losing control of their life.
These kinds of stories are disheartening, especially this early in my career. I want my next two or three decades in medicine to be defined by empowering patients and improving their health, not by waiting while their symptoms worsen.
The more of these cases I see, the more I kept wondering,
It only took a few of these conversations before I realized what needed to be done. Instead of watching my patients suffer, I took action and built a tool that would answer all of these questions for them.
Want answers to these questions? Read more about how private surgery works in Canada and learn your options for faster surgery.
Entrepreneurship wasn’t part of my original career plan. I didn’t go to medical school to start a company. From the outset, I didn’t see myself as a “founder,” but rather a family doctor trying to help his patients navigate a healthcare system that no longer worked for them.
Medicine is a historically conservative institution—change happens at a glacial pace. While some of that resistance to change is rooted in ethical concerns about patient safety and rigorous experimentation, much of it comes down to plain old bureaucratic inertia. Innovative ideas get bogged down by red tape, ethics applications, and the need for multiple higher-ups to sign off on anything new.
The more I explored this idea, the more I realized that the most meaningful way to change the healthcare system might be to create something new outside of it.
I started simple. I sketched out what a better patient experience would look like. I researched how private surgical care works in Canada and abroad. I spoke with other physicians, tech-savvy friends, and early-stage founders. The world of startups was foreign to me, but solving complex problems wasn’t.
Just fix things that seem broken, regardless of whether it seems like the problem is important enough to build a company on. - Paul Graham, Co-Founder of Y Combinator
Doctors are natural fixers; we’re compulsive problem-solvers. That’s why I think Paul Graham’s advice to founders oddly reflects the medical ethos.
As a doctor, I’ve been trained to gather information, weigh evidence, and make high-stakes decisions. Those same skills turned out to be surprisingly useful in entrepreneurship. What I lacked in business experience, I made up for in mission-driven focus. I knew the problem inside and out, and I was determined to build a solution both patients and physicians could trust.
I didn’t just want to build an online platform. I wanted to build a movement—one that could make surgical care in Canada more accessible while giving patients back their autonomy.
Canadians, for better or worse, are incredibly egalitarian. We strongly believe that everyone should have access to the same resources, especially when it comes to healthcare. That mindset has helped build a robust public system grounded in universal access to care.
But somewhere along the way, this collective pride morphed into something more dangerous: complacency.
We’ve become so used to the status quo that we now accept year-long queues for specialist care as an unavoidable fact of life. We wait, suffer quietly, and tell ourselves it's fair because everyone else is waiting, too.
This malaise within our healthcare system has created a climate where tech innovation is met with suspicion. Suggesting that Canadians should explore options to receive faster care is often treated as a slippery slope toward full-blown healthcare privatization.
I find the myth that public and private healthcare cannot ethically coexist not only untrue, but actively harmful. It shuts down nuanced perspective, and prevents us from imagining creative, compassionate solutions that could benefit everyone.
Read more about the myths surrounding private surgery in Canada—and how it can actually save our public system.
At the heart of Surgency are three guiding principles: transparency, accessibility, and agency.
Canadians are used to thinking about healthcare as something separate from financial decisions. That works fine in the public system, but trying to navigate private options without discussing cost is like shopping for a home without knowing the price.
Big decisions often carry big expenses. It makes far more sense for the price to be on the front page of a listing, not hidden until you're about to sign on the dotted line.
Surgency values transparency, especially when it comes to healthcare costs. We encourage surgeons to publish their price ranges on our platform, and we actively publish comprehensive procedure breakdowns—including cost estimates—so that patients can make informed decisions about their care.
Private surgery isn’t for everyone, and I’m under no illusion that every Canadian can afford it. But I believe the main reason it's so underutilized is that no one feels comfortable even talking about it.
That’s why Surgency is committed to educating patients about their options, including costs, prep, aftercare, risks. My goal is to make private surgery a known option Canada, not something reserved for the ultra-wealthy or those with insider connections.
And by encouraging patients to pursue elective surgeries through private means when appropriate, we can help ease the growing strain on our public system, making publicly funded procedures more accessible for those who truly depend on them.
Patient autonomy has long been a core tenet of medicine. As a doctor, empowering patients to take charge of their health and make decisions that work for them is deeply rewarding. And while medicine has historically been guilty of paternalism, my generation was trained to prioritize autonomy above all else.
But as our healthcare system buckles under the weight of the growing backlog, patients are becoming less autonomous. The system decides everything for them. And slowly, they stop asking questions.
Critics will argue this is the price we pay for a universal system and that we must accept limitations for the common good. But I believe that’s a defeatist way of thinking. Viable alternatives are right in front of us—we just have to give patients the agency to choose them.
Innovation in healthcare starts with restoring agency. At Surgency, that’s priority number one.
Explore the Surgency webapp.
I’m building a business in one of the most contentious spaces in Canadian discource, and I know full well that some Canadians won’t be fans of me or my company. And that’s okay. I didn’t start Surgency for them.
I founded Surgency for my suffering patients and their caregivers, for the people who do want to know their options, and for those who want to take back control of their healthcare journey.
I know Surgency will be misunderstood, just like private surgery has been. And while some may mischaracterize our intentions, our mission remains clear: to give patients options and improve access to care.
So let’s pre-emptively set the record straight. Here’s what Surgency is not trying to do.
Canada’s universal healthcare system is a treasure. It is indispensable and absolutely worth protecting. I know this not just as a (still-practicing) family physician, but from personal experience.
When my dad was 55, he was diagnosed with an aggressive type of prostate cancer after his PSA levels kept rising. He’s now alive, well, and cancer-free.
When he needed surgery, my dad received definitive treatment without incurring a single out-of-pocket expense. His retirement plans stayed intact. His ability to help his kids pay for school wasn’t compromised. He didn’t need to refinance his house.
Yes, he waited a little longer than he would have liked, but the system came through for him. He needed life-saving care, and he got it.
I try not to imagine what would’ve happened to my dad if we lived in a country without universal access to care. I’ve benefited from that system immensely, and so have my patients.
Surgency is not about privatization. It’s about innovation. It’s about collaboration. Private surgery has a role to play in Canadian healthcare—as it does among the healthcare systems of all our G20 peers—but that role does not involve replacing the public system.
Surgency isn’t here to displace the critical, life-saving services that our public healthcare system provides. That system exists to ensure no Canadian is denied emergency or essential medical care based on their income, and I believe in that mission wholeheartedly.
As my dad’s experience highlights, Canada’s healthcare system is good at coming through for people who need urgent access to surgery. While some patients still choose to travel abroad for ultra-fast care or more experimental procedures that aren’t available here, Canadians can generally count on timely access for cancer and cardiovascular conditions, especially when lives are on the line.
What Surgency does focus on is 'elective' surgery: the kinds of procedures that improve quality of life, but are often considered non-urgent by the system (but I can tell you they feel urgent to patients).
We’re talking about patients waiting months—or even years—for hip and knee replacements, ACL reconstructions, hernia repairs, or gynecologic and urologic procedures. These aren’t life-threatening conditions, but they are certainly life-limiting.
These patients aren’t trying to skip the line in an emergency room (the two systems aren't competing for the same operating room time). They’re looking for relief from chronic pain, sleepless nights, disrupted work, and physical limitations that get worse with every passing week. For them, having options matters.
I didn’t start Surgency because I have all the answers. I founded it because I was tired of watching my patients tread water while waiting for care they needed months or years earlier.
Surgency is a response to a flagging system, but more importantly, it’s a step toward something better. It’s a platform built by a physician who understands the frustration, the complexity, and the urgency of navigating Canada’s surgical landscape.
This isn’t about abandoning public healthcare. It’s about building on its strengths. It’s about enhancing transparency, improving access, and giving Canadians a renewed sense of agency. It’s about putting tools into the hands of people who are ready to reclaim their health on their terms.
If you believe patients deserve more choice—if you’re a patient, a family doctor, or a surgeon who sees the value in building a better path forward—I invite you to join us.
Let’s create a system where no one has to wait in the dark.