The Patient Files: Hidden stories from inside Canadian Healthcare

We’ve all gotten medical advice we didn’t follow. But sometimes you’re deemed too sick – too crazy – to ignore medical advice.

Most provinces have a framework for what happens when people are deemed unable to make decisions about their own health. Some provinces are expanding these, and Ontario’s leaders have mused about doing so.

Ontario nurses have launched a constitutional challenge over an arbitration system they say puts healthcare workers and patients at risk – in part by refusing to cap the number of people nurses care for at a time.

More than 2,000 academic papers have cited or based some of their content on fictional case studies that have now been retroactively corrected by Canada’s leading pediatric journal, the Investigative Journalism Bureau (IJB) has found.

Explore the patterns in childbirth deaths over time and examine how causes of death overlap with different factors.

The IJB found Canadian women are dying preventable pregnancy-related deaths and experiencing other adverse effects in childbirth. And Canada is bad at tracking maternal deaths. In fact, while data show a doubling in the maternal mortality rate for the decade ending in 2024, many experts think that reflects improvements in record-keeping rather than a dramatic rise in deaths.

A review of a decade of Ontario coroner’s reports shows the same observations cropping up again and again. Medical practitioners aren’t sharing vital information; patients aren’t being adequately monitored; and strained resources are undermining life-saving care. These circumstances can set the stage for tragedy.

Employees noted a gap between CAMH's mental health mission and the psychological state of its nurses and other staff

Nurses took to the streets at 26 hospitals in 15 cities across Ontario days after the IJB published a story on how nurses are overburdened by unregulated patient loads.

The reports are from hospitals in Niagara Health network, which said it follows staffing guidelines and is “committed to providing the best possible care.”

Following our multi-year investigation into Ontario hospitals, Physician/Journalist Blair Bigham shares a personal reflection on the challenges, revelations, and impact of this project. This is Behind the Reporting.

The U.K. aims to make pharmacogenomic tests more accessible, saying systematic testing “has the potential to transform patient’s lives.”

We obtained years’ worth of patient survey data from more than 50 Ontario hospitals and health networks.

To give Ontarians an inside look at the care being delivered in the province’s hospitals, we are publishing patient-survey data obtained through dozens of freedom-of-information requests.

We obtained years’ worth of patient feedback from hospitals and health networks around Ontario. Here's what some patients had to say.