Words and Phrases - "patient"

The appellant (“Vocan”) provided treatment and supplied assessment reports to insurance companies or legal representatives in respect of individuals injured in motor vehicle accidents. The reports were prepared by assessors (who were found by Lyons J to be independent contractors rather than agents of Vocan, given the low degree of Vocan control over them), who examined and tested the injured individuals at the Vocan facility.

Vocan submitted that its facility was a health care facility, being “a facility … operated for the purpose of providing medical … care,” so that its supply of the reports was exempted under Sched. V, Pt. II, s. 2 as a supply of an “institutional health care service” rendered to patients of the facility. In finding that the Vocan facility was not a health care facility, Lyons J stated (at para. 117-119):

A contextual analysis supports that “medical care” is to be interpreted as being connected to the practice of medicine. …

… “[M]edical care” does not mean “health care”.

No treatment was performed by a Medical Practitioner (physician, medical doctor or surgeon or dentist) at Vocan’s facility. No evidence was presented that medication was prescribed at Vocan’s facility. Vocan did not operate for the purpose of providing medical care.

After also noting that any care relationship was between the assessor and the individual, not Vocan and the individual, she further found (at para. 139) that “individuals were not patients of Vocan’s facility such that the supply of the Reports were not made to a patient of Vocan’s facility.” Accordingly, the supplies of the reports were not exempted.