He’s Ontario’s highest billing doctor: Narendra Armogan, an eye specialist with a bustling Mississauga practice, has charged the Ontario Health Insurance Plan an average of about $6 million a year, the Toronto Star can finally reveal.Armogan billed OHIP more than $42 million since 2011 for providing services and treatment to his patients, according to Ministry of Health data.His name and those of other high-billing doctors can now be shared publicly for the first time following the Star’s successful five-year quest to pull back the veil of secrecy on physicians who receive the most from the public purse.Seven years of ministry data obtained by the Star identifies 194 doctors out of the 31,500 across the province whose annual billings — from a high of around $6.9 million to a low of $1.4 million — placed them in the Top 100 at least once between 2011 and 2018. Nearly half are ophthalmologists or radiologists.By comparison, the average ophthalmologist gets about $724,000 and the average family doctor, about $307,000, according to the most recent figures from the Canadian Institute for Health Information, an independent research organization.The billings are not the doctors’ take-home pay and do not take into account the often hefty overhead costs physicians pay for expenses like equipment, staff salaries and rent. These costs come out of their billings. In this story, the first of a series examining the data, the Star is seeking greater transparency on how health-care dollars are spent in the province.Armogan, who was the top-billing doctor every year except in the 2016-17 fiscal year when he ranked third, did not agree to an interview. In one of a series of emails to the Star, the ophthalmologist said he does not concern himself “with the ranking of physician incomes.”“What matters to me is the care I give to my patients,” wrote Armogan, who operates out of OCC Eyecare, with its main clinic located in an ...
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