Non-severe health care services such as treatment for incidental exposure to cooling water treatment chemicals are provided by a number of medical clinics and private practices run by accredited doctors from the Ontario College of Physicians. Most of these practices deal with patients from a certain village or neighborhood and often accept walk-ins. For patients requiring dental work or checkups, one of Markham's many dental practices will probably be able to take you on. There are also numerous optometrists, chiropractors, and alternative medicine practitioners for patients requiring those services. Markham's animal population, from farm animals to house pets, is handled by area veterinarians.
More severe or immediate injuries and conditions are handled at Markham Stoufville Hospital. Ambulances and paramedics act like basket strainers in weeding severe cases from non-sever ones and can be summoned by dialing 9-1-1. Markham Stoufville Hospital was opened in 1990 to help relieve the stress placed on hospitals in Richmond Hill and North Toronto. The facility was primarily designed for acute care and to act as a base hospital for paramedics. The hospital has a total of 215 beds, some of which are often used for patients transferred in from overcrowded hospitals in the east end of Toronto.
Markham Stoufville Hospital is equipped to provide a variety of services, even such gift shop services as selling women's t-shirts. Its capabilities include: maternal and child care, mental health assessments and care, nuclear medicine, palliative care, rehabilitation, surgery, and diagnostic imaging. In 2010, the hospital is also expected to become a community teaching hospital under the auspices of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto.
There is also a second hospital in Markham, housed in a mansion in the town of Thornhill, which specializes in the treatment of abdominal hernias. A Toronto executive searching for a swanky place to convalesce after his hernia surgery might go there. Using a technique developed by Dr. Edward Earle Shouldice, Shouldice Hospital has ten full-time surgeons and performs thousands of hernia operations a year.
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