Sign here, and OHIP pays: the naturopath lab-panel workaround
Ontario naturopaths may order a limited list of lab tests, but the patient pays. So patients are being sent to their family doctor with the naturopath's list and a request for a signature. A Toronto family physician has now said publicly what that costs.
What a family doctor reported
On 16 September 2026 the Medical Post published an opinion piece by Dr. Michelle Greiver, a family physician with the North York Family Health Team and a professor in the University of Toronto's Department of Family and Community Medicine. Her subject was a scenario she says keeps recurring: a patient arrives with a long list of tests, often vitamin, hormone and micronutrient panels, recommended by a naturopath, and asks her to complete the requisition. The understanding on the patient's side is simple. If the family doctor signs, the public plan pays. If the naturopath orders, the patient does.
Dr. Greiver's objection is not about the paperwork alone. A physician is accountable for every test she orders, and a test that is not clinically indicated on her own assessment should not be ordered, whoever proposed it. Large untargeted panels generate incidental findings, repeat testing, referrals and patient anxiety, and the follow-up lands back in primary care. Signing so that a private cost becomes a public one, she writes, asks the physician to
act as a funding conduit rather than an accountable decision-maker.
Her own approach: assess the patient and ask what problem the testing is meant to answer; order only what is indicated and explain why the rest is not; document a refusal; and tell the patient that a provider who believes testing is needed should order it within their own scope and funding. She also asks the College of Naturopaths of Ontario to discourage its registrants from seeking physician signatures for public coverage, and to publish plain guidance so that patients are not put in the middle.
Why the incentive exists
Since 2015, Ontario naturopaths have had authority to requisition laboratory tests. That authority is narrow. The College's own rules limit registrants to a listed set of tests, performed only in laboratories licensed under Ontario's Laboratory and Specimen Collection Centre Licensing Act, and permit blood to be drawn in the office only for a handful of point-of-care tests.
What the authority does not carry is OHIP coverage. Tests on an ND requisition are billed privately. The same test on a physician's or nurse practitioner's requisition is, in most cases, insured. The price difference is created entirely by whose name is at the bottom of the form.
The naturopath side says it plainly
A December 2025 blog post on the website of an Ajax, Ontario naturopathic clinic explains to patients that OHIP coverage depends on who signs the requisition, not on the test itself. It then describes the route to coverage: the naturopath recommends specific tests, and the family doctor or nurse practitioner orders them. The post frames this as collaborative care and does note that the family doctor must agree. It is a fair illustration of the mechanism Dr. Greiver describes, seen from the other end of the referral.
Why it is not harmless
The objection is not that naturopaths are ordering ordinary blood work. It is that the panels are often broad, symptom-agnostic and "optimization"-driven, and that some of what is recommended alongside them, such as IgG food sensitivity tests, is not considered valid by Canadian allergists at all. When a physician re-signs a panel she did not choose, she inherits responsibility for every abnormal result it produces, including the ones that mean nothing and still have to be chased.
There is also a quieter cost. Every "no" in the exam room is a conversation with a patient who has already paid a naturopath for advice and been told the tests were necessary. The family doctor is cast as the obstacle, and the relationship that primary care depends on absorbs the friction.
What other physicians said
The comments under the Medical Post piece, all from physicians, went in one direction. One retired doctor contrasted what the patient pays the naturopath with what the family physician is paid for the visit that follows. Others widened the complaint to the whole category of offloaded work: specialists who send patients back for tests they could order themselves, duplicate lab reports, and repeated sick-note forms. One called on the medical regulators to step in on low-value testing.
What patients should know
If a naturopath recommends tests, the naturopath can order the ones within their authority, and you will pay for them. Your family doctor will order only what they judge to be needed after assessing you. When they decline the rest, they are not blocking your care; they are doing what they are required to do with public money and with their own professional accountability. If you are unsure whether a test is worth having, ask either practitioner the question Dr. Greiver asks first: what problem is this test meant to answer?
- Michelle Greiver, "The hidden toll of 'outside lab panels' on primary care", Medical Post (Canadian Healthcare Network), 16 September 2026, and reader comments. (Subscription required.)
- College of Naturopaths of Ontario, Ordering Laboratory Tests, and Laboratory Testing fact sheet (2021).
- Aspire Natural Health (Ajax, ON), "Are Blood Tests Ordered by Naturopaths Covered by OHIP?", 30 December 2025.