U.S. Doctors Leaving For Canada

Posted on by

B Kelman, NPR 5/29/25: American doctors look to relocate to Canada to avoid the Trump administration

An excerpt:

Earlier this year, as President Donald Trump was beginning to reshape the American government, Michael, an emergency room doctor who was born, raised, and trained in the United States, packed up his family and left the country…”Part of being a physician is being kind to people who are in their weakest place,” Michael said. “And I feel like our country is devolving to really step on people who are weak and vulnerable…”

The Medical Council of Canada said in an email statement that the number of American doctors creating accounts on physiciansapply.ca, which is “typically the first step” to being licensed in Canada, has increased more than 750% over the past seven months compared with the same time period last year — from 71 applicants to 615. Separately, medical licensing organizations in Canada’s most populous provinces reported a rise in Americans either applying for or receiving Canadian licenses, with at least some doctors disclosing they were moving specifically because of Trump…

 While it was once more difficult for American doctors to practice in Canada due to discrepancies in medical education standards, Canadian provinces have relaxed some licensing regulations in recent years, and some are expediting licensing for U.S.-trained physicians…

Michael, the physician who moved to Canada this year, said he had long been wary of what he describes as escalating right-wing political rhetoric and unchecked gun violence in the United States, the latter of which he witnessed firsthand during a decade working in American emergency rooms…

This desire to leave has also been striking to Hippocratic Adventures, a small business that helps American doctors practice medicine in other countries…

Alison Carleton, a family medicine doctor who moved from Iowa to Manitoba in 2017, said she left to escape the daily grind of America’s for-profit health care system and because she was appalled that Trump was elected the first time. Carleton said she now runs a small-town clinic with low stress, less paperwork, and no fear of burying her patients in medical debt.

My take: There are more than one million physicians in the U.S. per AAMC data; so the absolute numbers leaving are quite small. However, this uptick in physicians leaving is another indicator of U.S. physicians being unhappy with U.S. healthcare policy and the direction in which it is headed.

Related topic of physicians choosing alternative practice setting while staying in U.S.: YouTube: NEJM Interview: Zirui Song on the rise of concierge and direct primary care practices (13 minutes)

Related article: Z Song et al. N Engl J Med 2025;392:1977-1979. Primary Care — From Common Good to Free-Market Commodity

Throughout the United States, PCPs have been leaving traditional practices for concierge and direct primary care (DPC) practices, in which patients are offered personalized and more accessible primary care in exchange for membership or retainer fees… these models can offer physicians notable advantages over traditional primary care models, including greater clinical autonomy, more take-home pay, and improved work–life balance and job satisfaction.4,5 Less burdened by prior authorizations, insurance denials, billing and coding tasks, and other demands in traditional practices — including the need to adhere to regulatory requirements under alternative payment models — physicians often have more time for direct patient care...Yet trade-offs — in the form of decreased access for patients [without a concierge physician] and increased strain on PCPs in traditional primary care — are borne by the rest of society.

Related blog posts: