COUNCIL AWARD
The Dynamo
of Kirkland
Lake
Dr. Mark Spiller
D
r. Mark Spiller of Kirkland Lake was
presented with the CPSO Council Award
at the September Council meeting. Dr.
Spiller is the Chief of Staff at the Kirkland
Lake and District Hospital, where he also serves as the
Chief of Family Practice and Emergency Medicine.
Dr. Spiller has devoted 29 years of medical practice
to his Kirkland Lake community, where he has had a pro-
found effect, transforming the medical institutions and
impacting the care of patients. In addition to many years
of service as chief of staff, he has been a coroner and the
telehealth medical director. He is an assistant professor
at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine and, in ad-
dition to working in the Kirkland Lake hospital’s emer-
gency department, he does emergency room shifts at the
nearby Englehart and District Hospital. He also attends
to patients at a clinic that helps serve the Matachewan
First Nations Reserve.
Dr. Spiller was born and raised in Toronto and moved
to Kirkland Lake shortly after graduating from the Uni-
versity of Toronto’s School of Medicine. His leadership
skills and positive attitude are credited with improved
access to care in the community, such as by bringing the
OTN and Virtual Critical Care pilot projects to the Kirk-
land Lake and District Hospital. As a physician recruiter,
he has worked tirelessly to find and entice physicians to
join the community, the result of which is a robust hos-
pitalist program in Kirkland Lake with visiting specialists
from across the spectrum. From his earliest days in the
community, Dr. Spiller has been a champion and facilita-
tor of resource sharing among health-care professionals
and the two local hospitals, all with a view to ensuring
comprehensive, timely care in the community. Not
surprisingly, he was recently appointed the first chief of
staff for the soon to be amalgamated Kirkland Lake and
Englehart hospitals.
We recently spoke to Dr. Spiller about his life and
work:
Is it true that medicine was not your first career
choice?
Yes, it’s true! I had originally intended to be a veterinarian
but vet school spaces were very limited in those days and
it was difficult to get a place. When I was considering
ISSUE 3, 2019 DIALOGUE
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