SIOUX LOOKOUT — An award-winning pediatrician is calling for a complete overhaul of the federal program that facilitates transportation for Indigenous patients in the region.
Dr. Anna Banerji had roughly 20 appointments booked when she flew to Sioux Lookout last week — only four of her young patients showed up.
Most of the no-shows couldn’t make it, she said, because they couldn’t get transportation.
Banerji is prepared to fight the government over the failings she sees in the medical transport system under the Non-Insured Health Benefits (NIHB) program, which was established to ensure access to health care for Indigenous people who don’t have other health coverage.
“It’s completely unacceptable that this is the way it is,” she said. “And I know that we would never accept this in the south. Absolutely not.
“Like people would be fired, you know. The whole system, the whole thing would be scrapped. And yet we accept this for Indigenous people.”
Banerji, an associate professor with the University of Toronto’s faculty of medicine, has won multiple awards as both a doctor and a public health advocate.
She travels to the Meno Ya Win Health Centre every couple months and the children she treats there are “generally really sick.”
“I should be busy with the amount of illness that some of these kids have, yet I’m sitting there all day because they couldn’t arrange the transportation.”
When patients miss an appointment with her or any other specialist, Banerji said, it could be months before they can been seen again.
“Someone might have cancer and it could spread. And then all of a sudden instead of removing something simple, it becomes so, so much more complicated.”
“So this has a serious and direct impact to health.”
In a letter to Indigenous Services Canada, Banerji called the system “profoundly disrespectful” to patients and healthcare providers.
“There appears to be a major systemic breakdown in the coordination of patient transportation, resulting in significant barriers to care and extremely high no-show rates for medical appointments,” she wrote.
Administrators, clerical staff and clinicians have reported that calls to the NIHB booking phone line often go unanswered, she wrote, and when appointments are faxed to NIHB, there is often no confirmation or communication whether transportation has been booked.
“Even when flights are eventually arranged, patients are frequently informed at the last minute – sometimes only an hour before departure” she said, adding that childcare, elder care, and time off of work often can’t be arranged in time.
“I believe this reflects a significant double standard in the care provided to Indigenous peoples. If a private company serving non-Indigenous populations operated with this level of inefficiency and lack or accountability, it would likely have been dismantled years ago” she wrote.
Indigenous Services Canada says it has “been working diligently to improve service levels in the Ontario Region medical transportation call center.”
“To improve service efficiency, we have increased staffing and training, and simplified internal processes as well as travel request documentation. These changes aim to improve travel request processing times, reduce delays, and decrease phone wait times,” wrote ISC spokesperson Pascal Laplante in an email to Newswatch.
He continued that after receiving feedback from clients, communities and health partners, they “will continually re-assess call center performance and service levels, and further streamline our processes to improve client-focused service.”
All that is too little too late for Banerji.
She said the issues seem to have gotten worse recently and “people should lose their jobs.”
Missed appointments are costly for the health care system, says Banerji, and she doesn’t want to see more money wasted investigating the problem.
“Every doctor in that hospital will tell you that the system’s not working and so they need to fix it. And maybe it’s time for an outside agency to come in and make sure that things are done in the way that we would expect it down here.
“No one should have to miss their appointment because they haven’t been told about their appointment, or it’s not scheduled, or it’s scheduled within an hour of the appointment. No one should have to do that.
“And so I don’t know why this is acceptable for Indigenous people when we wouldn’t accept it.”
After 30 years working with different Indigenous communities, she says she’s not new to fighting for change.
“But we shouldn’t have to fight so hard for equity.”
– With files from Leigh Nunan
By Maya Ekman, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Original Published on Jun 05, 2026 at 21:57
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