Guide for super visa families · Updated August 2026
The immigration medical exam is the part everyone knows about. The decisions that cause trouble later — medication, records, insurance timing — are all made in the same few weeks, and get far less attention.
To be clear about what we cannot do. Doctor Fran is not an IRCC panel physician and cannot perform, complete or sign an immigration medical exam. Only a physician on Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s own panel list can do that, and the list is the only correct place to look. This page explains the process and the preparation around it; for the exam itself you need IRCC’s panel physician list.
The short version. A super visa applicant must take an immigration medical exam, and IRCC is unambiguous about who may do it: “You must see a doctor on the list of panel physicians. Your own doctor can’t do the medical exam.” The results are valid for twelve months. Beyond that exam, the weeks before departure are the only chance to do three things that cannot be done afterwards — fill the medication supply to the legal maximum, collect the medical records nobody will be able to obtain from another continent, and check the insurance against the dates of any recent change in your parent’s health.
Key facts at a glance
In this guide
Every super visa applicant must take an immigration medical exam. Its purpose is to assess admissibility to Canada, and it forms part of the application rather than part of anyone’s medical care.
The single most common mistake is booking it with the family doctor. IRCC could not be clearer:
“Only a panel physician authorized by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada can do the immigration medical exam… You cannot choose your family doctor if their name is not on this list.”
A physician who is not on the panel cannot do it, however senior, however well they know the patient, and however willing. An exam performed by the wrong doctor is not a slow version of the right one — it does not count, and the fee is not recoverable. The panel physician list is searchable by country and city.
Timing matters more than families expect. Results are valid for twelve months. Book too early relative to the rest of the application and the validity can expire before the flight, which means paying for the exam a second time. Book too late and the exam becomes the thing everything else waits on. In practice it belongs alongside the rest of the application, not months ahead of it.
The exam itself covers weight and height, hearing and vision, the heart and lungs, the abdomen, mobility of the limbs and the skin, along with a medical history questionnaire. Chest X-rays and laboratory tests are required depending on age. Afterwards the panel physician sends the results to IRCC directly and gives the applicant a document confirming the exam took place — IRCC advises keeping that document, so it should travel with the passport rather than in a suitcase.
On cost, IRCC says only that you must pay for the exam and that “the cost can differ from one doctor to another”. It does not set or cap the fee, and there is no published national figure to compare against. If two panel physicians are within reach, it is reasonable to ask both what they charge, including any X-ray or laboratory work.
IRCC lists what to bring, and two items on the list are worth taking seriously because they are the ones people arrive without.
It is worth setting expectations within the family, because the immigration medical exam is sometimes treated as a general health check that clears a parent to travel. It is not that. It is an assessment for the purposes of an immigration decision, carried out for IRCC, and the panel physician’s duty in performing it runs to IRCC rather than to the patient.
Passing it does not mean a condition is stable, that medication is optimised, or that the trip is medically sensible. If your parent has a condition that has been unsettled recently, the useful conversation is with their own doctor — separately, and preferably before the insurance is bought. That conversation is also the one that produces the records worth carrying.
Of everything on this page, this is the item with a hard limit, and it is smaller than most families assume.
Health Canada permits a visitor to bring no more than a 90-day supply or a single course of treatment, whichever is less. For narcotics and controlled drugs the limit is a single course of treatment or a 30-day supply, and those must be declared at customs. Everything must arrive in the pharmacy’s own packaging, in the original retail package, or with the original label attached — a pill organiser packed at home does not satisfy this.
A super visa can admit a parent for up to five years. Health Canada lets them bring ninety days of medicine. Nothing your family does closes that gap, so plan for it rather than discovering it. Once the supply runs out, a prescription from your parent’s doctor at home cannot be filled by an Ontario pharmacy — the rule is about who signed it, not what the drug is.
We have set out how that works, and what the alternatives are, in prescriptions and refills for visiting parents.
Before departure, then: fill everything to the maximum the rules allow, keep it in its labelled packaging, photograph the prescription and the labels, and ask your parent’s doctor for a printed medication list in English with doses and the conditions being treated. That single sheet of paper is worth more than any other document once your parent is in Ontario.
Medical records do not follow anyone across a border. An Ontario physician assessing your mother in November has access to nothing at all unless she brought it with her, and obtaining records from a hospital in another country, in another language, at a distance, is slow when it works at all.
Photographs on a phone are perfectly adequate for most of this. What is worth having:
Names of conditions and drugs differ between countries. A report in the original language is still worth carrying — the numbers, dates and drug names in it are usually decipherable even where the prose is not.
This is the part of pre-departure preparation that families discover afterwards, and it is the reason it belongs on this page rather than in the insurance section alone.
Super visa insurance policies contain a stability period — a window immediately before coverage begins during which a pre-existing condition must have remained unchanged. Across six Canadian insurers we reviewed in August 2026, that window ranged from 90 days to 365 days, and several insurers apply a longer one to older travellers. Every wording we read treats a change of medication, including a change of dosage, as breaking stability.
The practical consequence is uncomfortable: a routine dose adjustment made a few weeks before the flight, by a doctor doing exactly the right thing clinically, can put the condition outside the coverage. Nobody has done anything wrong, and the claim can still be refused.
So the sequence matters. Check the stability period in the policy you are considering, look at the date of the most recent change to your parent’s treatment, and compare the two before buying rather than after. The full explanation is in what super visa insurance won’t cover, and the insurer-by-insurer detail is in our comparison of super visa insurance.
| Before the flight | Why |
|---|---|
| Book the immigration medical exam with a panel physician from IRCC’s list | A family doctor cannot do it, and an exam by the wrong doctor does not count |
| Take ID, glasses, medical reports, a medication list and vaccination records to the exam | IRCC’s own list; ask when booking whether photographs are needed |
| Keep the document confirming the exam with the passport | IRCC advises keeping it as proof |
| Check the stability period against the date of the last treatment change before buying insurance | A recent dose change can put a condition outside coverage |
| Fill every prescription to the maximum allowed | 90 days for ordinary drugs; 30 for narcotics and controlled drugs |
| Keep medication in pharmacy packaging and declare controlled drugs | Health Canada’s packaging rule; a pill organiser does not meet it |
| Get a printed medication and diagnosis list in English | The most useful single document once in Ontario |
| Photograph records, prescriptions and medication labels | Survives lost luggage and crosses borders freely |
| Save the insurer’s 24-hour assistance number in two phones | Some policies require a call before attending a clinic |
| Note the date the medication supply runs out and count back three weeks | That is when to arrange an Ontario assessment |
No. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada states that only a panel physician authorised by IRCC can do the immigration medical exam, and that you cannot choose your family doctor if their name is not on the panel list. An exam performed by a physician who is not on the list does not count towards the application, and the fee is not recoverable. IRCC publishes a searchable list of panel physicians by country and city.
IRCC states that medical exam results are valid for 12 months. If the applicant does not arrive in Canada within that period, another exam may be required. Because of that window, the exam is usually best booked alongside the rest of the application rather than months in advance.
The panel physician records weight and height, checks hearing and vision, listens to the heart and lungs, examines the abdomen, checks mobility of the limbs and inspects the skin, and takes a medical history. Depending on the applicant's age, a chest X-ray and laboratory tests may also be required. The physician sends the results to IRCC and gives the applicant a document confirming the exam took place.
IRCC does not set the fee. It states that you must pay for the medical exam, that the cost can differ from one doctor to another, and that all related fees including any special tests are paid at the appointment. If the application is refused after the exam, those fees are not refunded. Where more than one panel physician is within reach, it is reasonable to ask each what they charge including X-ray and laboratory work.
A summary letter from their doctor at home listing diagnoses and current treatment, recent blood test results, recent cardiac investigations and specialist letters, discharge summaries from any admission or operation, imaging reports, and a written note of allergies and previous drug reactions. Photographs on a phone are adequate. Records do not transfer across borders, so anything not brought is effectively unavailable to an Ontario physician.
Check the policy's stability period against the date of the most recent change before buying. Super visa policies contain a stability period during which a pre-existing condition must have remained unchanged, and across six Canadian insurers reviewed in August 2026 that window ranged from 90 days to 365 days. Every wording reviewed treats a change of medication, including a dosage change, as breaking stability, so a routine adjustment shortly before departure can put the condition outside coverage.
Related guides
Immigration medical exam requirements, validity, contents, fees and the list of what to bring are quoted from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s own pages, verified 26 August 2026. Medication import limits and packaging requirements come from Health Canada. Stability period findings come from six Canadian insurers’ own policy documents read in August 2026 and are set out in full on our insurance pages. Doctor Fran is not an IRCC panel physician and cannot perform, complete or sign an immigration medical exam, and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of IRCC or any panel physician. This page is general information about preparing for travel; it is not immigration advice, and it is not medical advice about whether any individual is fit to fly. In an emergency, call 911.
We cannot do the immigration medical exam — only an IRCC panel physician can. What we can do, once your parent has arrived, is a $82 consultation with an Ontario physician by phone: prescriptions, infections, referrals and notes, with no health card needed.
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