Canadians are passionate about their healthcare system—and their hockey. While the Canadian medical system is a source of pride—based on ideals of universal coverage, public funding, and high-quality medical care—this treasured healthcare system is failing due to soaring costs, the challenge of an aging population, and poor care delivery. It needs a reality check.

In How Hockey Can Save Healthcare, author and orthopaedic surgeon Dr. Stephen Pinney pulls the curtain back on the existing Canadian healthcare system and exposes its fundamental flaws—flaws that are the inevitable result of the system’s history and evolution. Hockey, Canada’s game, offers a potential principle-based solution to this national dilemma.

How Hockey Can Save Healthcare proposes a path forward that would allow Canadians to redesign their healthcare system in a way that matches their ideals. That redesign, Dr. Pinney proposes, should reflect ideas most Canadians know and accept: the principles inherent in a Stanley Cup–winning hockey team.

Stephen Pinney BA (Harvard), MD (McGill), M.Ed (UBC), FRCS(C) is a Canadian trained surgeon with a passion for quality improvement. He is a former Clinical Professor in the department of orthopaedics at the University of British Columbia and he previously served as head of the department of orthopaedics at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver, BC. He presently practices orthopaedics in San Francisco, California and consults on healthcare reform.

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