Canadian Medical: Five Years as a Paying Corporate Client, Then Terminated for Complaining
My experience with Canadian Medical (Prague, Czech Republic) has unfortunately been very negative. Five years ago, as CEO, I arranged a contract with Canadian Medical for company’s top management because, at that time, the services worked well. In my opinion, however, over the last roughly three years, the quality of Canadian Medical’s services has significantly deteriorated, especially in terms of organization and client care.
In my experience, appointments at Canadian Medical were repeatedly unavailable, previously scheduled appointments were cancelled, and there was even situation where a client arrived for an examination but the doctor was nowhere to be found, while the Canadian Medical client helpline was unable to resolve the situation. I also had the impression of growing staff instability, including the departure of doctors whom I personally considered to be very good.
What I consider the peak of this was a situation where, despite a contractual guarantee of an appointment for a non-urgent examination within 10 working days, Canadian Medical stated that there was no available appointment even for the following month, and that the month after that had not yet been opened. We were told that Canadian Medical would contact us once the appointments were released. No one contacted us. And when we followed up ourselves, the appointments had already been taken. Without further follow-up and escalation, the course of the communication suggested that an appointment more than three months away was a very real possibility. Frankly, at that moment I had the impression that a person would have been treated faster in the public healthcare system for free than under Canadian Medical’s paid “premium” care model. In my view, this is a completely unacceptable standard for a provider presenting itself as premium healthcare.
When I filed a complaint, I expected an apology and at least a commitment to remedy the situation. Instead, I received a response from the Director of the Canadian Medical Client Centre that struck me as unprofessional and arrogant. There was no apology. In my opinion, the core issue was completely ignored. Instead, the response focused on the alleged delivery of a message via their application, which in fact was never displayed. There was also no mention whatsoever of the fact that no one called us. At the same time, the contractual guarantee of examination appointments was effectively called into question by referring to a clause stating that the appointment date would be set after professional assessment. In my opinion, that interpretation is self-serving and contrary to the purpose and meaning of the contractual guarantee. To top it all off, the response added that Canadian Medical would respect it if we decided to terminate the contract.
Unfortunately, that was not the end of it. When the same scheduling problem occurred again, we were once more promised that Canadian Medical would call once new appointments were opened and that the application would send a notification. Again, nothing happened. By the time I called again, the relevant appointment had already been taken. When I then dared to point this out once more, in a very polite manner, Canadian Medical terminated the contract for the entire company. No apology, no effort to resolve the issue, no fair or constructive discussion. After five years of proper payment, the contract was, in my opinion, effectively terminated simply because I, as a client, politely complained about services that were not functioning properly.
From my perspective, this reflects a strongly anti-client approach on the part of Canadian Medical. From a company that presents itself as a provider of premium healthcare, I would expect the exact opposite: functional organization, the ability to handle complaints properly, and at least a basic level of respect for the client.
My personal recommendation is this: if you are already a client of Canadian Medical, be very careful about complaining. My experience suggests that a complaint may not lead to improvement, but rather to the termination of the relationship. If you are not yet a client of Canadian Medical, I would personally look elsewhere based on this experience. In Prague, in my current experience, there are several companies that value their clients and actively compete for them.
At the time of writing this review, I also could not find an option to publish a public review for Canadian Medical directly in Google search results, which I consider rather telling.