Dr. Danielle Martin
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Dr. Danielle Martin

Acclaimed Physician and Health Care Expert

Dr. Danielle Martin sees the cracks and challenges in our health care system every day. A family doctor and national media commentator on the health issues that hit closest to home for Canadians, Dr. Martin speaks with passion on our national health-care system, defending and defining the ways we can make it even more worthy of our immense national pride.

Dr. Martin’s video testimony on the merits of the Canadian vs. American health systems in a U.S. Senate Subcommittee hearing in Washington, with Senator Richard Burr and Bernie Sanders, went viral and has since achieved over one and a half million views and media attention worldwide.

Currently, Dr. Martin practices in the Family Practice Health Centre at Women’s College Hospital, where she is also the Vice-President of Medical Affairs and Health System Solutions. Additionally, she is the author of Better Now: Six Big Ideas to Improve Health Care for All Canadians.

In her first year of practice, Dr. Martin helped launch Canadian Doctors for Medicare, representing Canadian physicians who believe in a high quality, equitable, and sustainable health system, and chaired its board for seven years. She went on to help found the WCH Institute for Health System Solutions and Virtual Care – a hub of innovation dedicated to solving the health gaps in our system.

Dr. Martin has been named one of Toronto Life magazine’s “Top 50 Influentials”; called one of the most powerful doctors by The Medical Post; and listed as one of The Toronto Star’s top “13 People to Watch”. In the media she is a regular contributor to CBC TV’s The National, and writes a monthly column for Chatelaine magazine.

Delivering on the Promise of Medicare

What exactly is the Promise of Medicare? For starters, it has to do with living our values, specifically the value of equity of access to health care services.

Canada’s health care system was built on a promise we can all be proud of: the promise of access to services based on need, rather than the ability to pay. We can continue to be proud of that promise, but to deliver on it, Medicare needs to be improved. From the vantage point of a family doctor working in the system, this book shows how we can do better. Now.

Failure on the Hot Seat: Scaling Up Failure to Achieve Success in Health Care

It has been said that the Canadian health care system is a system of pilot projects: islands of excellence in a sea of challenges. In recent years, much work has been done to try to highlight and disseminate successful projects to improve quality, access and equity – and much remains to be done to ensure that we are not all continually trying to reinvent the wheel.

But in the area of learning from each other’s failures, we are even further behind. In the policy world, the clinical world and the research world, sharing failures is discouraged – let alone celebrating them. Dr. Danielle Martin will discuss why the health care system needs to learn to scale up both our successes and our failures, and how we might begin to do so.

The Pivot Point: From Pilot Project to System Solution

In 2014, Dr. Danielle Martin’s keen insights, wit and deep knowledge of Canada’s health care system brought her international acclaim when a video of her presentation to a United States Senate Subcommittee on health care went viral. Over 1.3 million people from across the globe watched as she challenged assumptions and changed minds about the state of health care in our country.

Now, hear insights into why change can be so challenging, what our usual stumbling blocks are and how we can work past them to transform small successes into bigger solutions that enhance the way we deliver care.