Brian Day

Dr. Brian Day, MRCP (UK), FRCS (Eng), FRCS (C), (born c. 1947) is a physician in Canada and the current president of the Canadian Medical Association. He is known as Dr. Profit by opponents and news media for his advocacy of private health care.

Early life
Day was born Brian Dayawalla, which name he went under until at least his twenties, and was raised in a working-class, post-war area of Liverpool, England. He was one of four children in a family with strong Labour views. Both his mother and father were socialists.

The area could be tough. He has a permanent scar on a finger from a knife fight when he was 10 years old. His father, a pharmacist, was killed in the mid-80s by a hooligans looking for drugs.

He was the only student from his elementary school who went to university. Day attended the Liverpool Institute, the same high school as Paul McCartney and George Harrison.

Early medical career
He obtained post-graduate qualifications in Britain, in both internal medicine and general surgery, and in 1978 completed his training and a M.Sc. degree at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

In 1979, Day received the Canadian Orthopaedic Association's Edouard Samson Award, for outstanding orthopaedic research in Canada. Following a fellowship in traumatology, in Basel, Switzerland, Oxford, and Los Angeles, he began practice at the Vancouver General Hospital. After starting in trauma, he developed an interest and expertise in orthopaedic sports medicine and arthroscopy. As an orthopedic surgeon, he earned an international reputation for performing arthroscopic surgery on knees, shoulders and elbows. Day is regarded as being instrumental in the introduction of arthroscopic joint surgery in Canada.

Advocacy of private health care
In 1997, Day founded Cambie Surgery Centre, a for-profit Vancouver hospital, which he co-owns with Dr. Mark Godley. Day is the facility's medical director and is the largest individual shareholder.

The centre operates outside Canada's publicly-funded health care system and sees about 5,000 patients a year. It caters mainly to people who have third-party insurance for their operations and has also been controversial for allowing patients waiting for surgeries in the public system to "jump the queue."

Day has said he decided to set up the Cambie Surgical Centre, which is non-union, after government funding decreases in the mid-90s cut his operating time at UBC from 17 hours a week to about six.

Dr. Day has argued many Canadians are being hypocritical towards private healthcare. Stating 70% of Canadians buy healthcare insurance but largely oppose private healthcare, neglecting the other 30% of Canadians who cannot afford the extra healthcare insurance.

He advocates a greater role for the private sector in Canadian healthcare as a means to reduce waiting times for all Canadians and save the Government money by treating people before their condition worsens. . He is a frequent spokesman for the topic with news media and submits position papers with government. For instance, his submission to Roy Romanow's Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada made 10 recommendations:
 * 1) De-politicize the debate
 * 2) Repeal the Canada Health Act
 * 3) Eliminate global budgets and reward productivity
 * 4) Incorporate business methods
 * 5) Increase privatization and contracting out
 * 6) Introduce competition, choice and accountability
 * 7) Massively reduce bureaucracy
 * 8) Reduce influence of public sector health unions
 * 9) Accept economic reality, and introduce user fees
 * 10) Rank “core services” and deinsure unnecessary services

In 2003, Maclean's Magazine named Day one its top 50 Canadians "to watch", describing him as "an iconoclast, whose time is now."

In August 2006, Day was elected president of the Canadian Medical Association for the 2006/07 term despite a challenge from the convention floor by Dr. Jack Burak regarding Day's views.

Other medical accomplishments
Day is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Canada, the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, and is certified by the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery.

From 1970 to 2005, Day wrote more than 80 scientific articles or book chapters, in areas of orthopaedics and arthroscopic surgery / sports medicine.


 * 1993 to 2001 - Associate Editor, Journal of Arthroscopic Surgery
 * 2001 - 80th Annual Osler Lecturer, Vancouver Medical Association
 * 2004 - President, Arthroscopy Association of North America (AANA)
 * 2004 - Honorary Member, Cuban Orthopaedic Association
 * 2004 - Member, Board of Trustees, Journal of Arthroscopy
 * 2005/06 - President, Canadian Independent Medical Clinics Association (CIMCA)