Toronto isn’t short on talent. Plenty of companies do innovative work in industries like healthcare, environment, and finance, the kind of disruption that that could raise our economic profile. Many brag-worthy people make this city forward-thinking and exciting place to live, and if they won’t humbly brag about themselves – we’d be glad to do so for them. First up, we’d like to introduce you to Nikolai Bratkovski, CEO and Founder of OpenCare - and his thoughts on a recent study from the Fraser Institute on Canada’s standing in universal healthcare.
Inspired by his own personal experiences, Nikolai Bratkovski started OpenCare, the data-driven doctor recommendations engine in 2012 to help people control their healthcare choices. He identified a problem that needed solving when he was looking for a doctor. While he had his own large network of healthcare professionals as a result of his work in the healthcare industry, finding the right provider was far from easy and enjoyable.
Nikolai assembled his team to address this problem that he and millions of other Canadians experience on a regular basis. With patient-experiences at the core, the OpenCare platform makes healthcare more personable and accessible by helping patients to find the best providers in their neighbourhood and to make appointments online.
According Fraser Institute’s International Health Policy Survey of Primary Care Physicians study, Canada’s universal healthcare reputation is at stake. Fraser Institute conducted a series of interviews involving more than 2,000 primary care doctors in Canada and compared results with those in Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. Canada performed below average on five of the six of the indicators that measured “access to care”. Another piece of concerning insight, 70% of the primary care doctors admitted to knowing that their patients experience frustrating and lengthy wait times.
“Governments need to better work with and provide relevant incentives to the private sector - to help fix some of these fundamental issues that exist within healthcare,” Nikolai Bratkovsky told YongeStreet. “But some things that need to change to help us address this problem,” suggesting that it’ll take combined efforts from both public and private sectors to move things forward.
OpenCare is a Toronto-based startup with ambitious plans to further expand within Canada and internationally. They are also hiring and so if improve healthcare from a patient-to-healthcare provider standpoint sounds like a good idea to you, please learn about joining their team
here.