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Ontario Health Coalition, unions concerned over Cornwall ophthalmology clinic’s practices

Posted: November 18, 2025

(November 17, 2025) By: Shawna O’Neill, The Kingston Whig Standard

Coalition and unions allege Cornwall clinic is charging people to receive priority treatment for their cataracts.

Stopping in Cornwall while on a press tour across the province discussing concerns over health-care privatization, the Ontario Health Coalition and Ontario Council of Hospital Unions/Canadian Union of Public Employees (OCHU-CUPE) raised concerns over the practices of a Cornwall-based ophthalmology clinic on Friday.

Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition, claimed a staff person at Premium Vision Surgical Centres in Cornwall told her they would not do cataract surgery at their facility unless people paid for the surgery and for add-ons. Mehra said this practice goes against the laws that protect publicly funded health care in Ontario.

When she called the clinic, Mehra said she was inquiring on behalf of her mother. She read the transcript of the conversation to a handful of individuals who attended the press conference at the Cornwall public library.

“At no point did they say cataract surgery is covered by OHIP, you don’t need to pay anything. They’re clearly selling queue-jumping. It’s the same physician (Dr. Tarek Youssef) working in the hospital and private clinic,” said Mehra. “This is not allowed, this is not OK, and it absolutely should stop.”

This newspaper contacted Premium Vision Surgical Centres for a comment Friday and to respond to the allegations laid against it and Youssef. He is licensed to perform ophthalmology and holds privileges at the Cornwall Community Hospital, where he specializes in cataract surgery.

No response was received on Friday, and an automated voice message on Monday said the clinic was closed from Nov. 17-23.

“Cornwall patients should know that they can get (cataract) surgery at the Cornwall Community Hospital and the average wait time for the lowest-priority patients — whose surgery does not need to be done imminently and whose cataracts are less developed — is 207 days, or just under seven months,” reads an Ontario Health Coalition statement.

“No one can charge patients for medically necessary hospital and physician services. No one can attach payment for a medically unnecessary service as a requirement to get the medically necessary service.”

Michael Hurley, president of OCHU-CUPE, spoke about how a 2024 Canadian Medical Association Journal study found that between 2017-22 in Ontario, the rate of cataract surgeries rose 22 per cent for patients with the highest socioeconomic status and fell 8.5 per cent for patients with the lowest socioeconomic status in the private for-profit surgical centres.

Mehra suggested the continual privatization of surgeries in Ontario is an existential threat to the single-payer public health-care system. The coalition and OCHU-CUPE are calling on the Ontario government to stop investing in for-profit health care and instead invest more in public hospitals. In June, Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced the province was investing $150 million to add 57 new private clinics across the province.

Guest speaker on the press tour, Allyson Pollock, professor emerita at Newcastle University, shared how she has been studying the privatization of surgeries in clinics and hospitals in England for the better part of 20 years. Discussing three of her research reports, Pollock shared how privatization has led to increased inequalities, longer wait-times, and a reduction in capacity in the public health-care system in England. Scotland, however, increased in-house capacity without using the private sector or increasing inequalities to the same extent.

The Ontario Health Coalition and OCHU-CUPE believes Pollock’s research offers important lessons for the Ontario government, which is comparatively in the initial stages of its plan to contract out cataract, hip, and knee surgeries to for-profit private clinics.

To learn more about the reports, visit CUPE’s website.

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