Most plan members now live with a chronic condition, yet employers underestimate it – Medcan wants HR leaders to know their workforce
Human resources (HR) leaders who step into the VIP lounge at HRFest Canada 2026 will face a pointed question about employee health and the rising cost of chronic disease, courtesy of a returning sponsor, Toronto-based proactive health company Medcan.
The festival runs Nov. 10 and 11, 2026, at Rebel in Toronto. “This is the second year Medcan is sponsoring the VIP lounge at HRFest, and we had a fantastic experience last year,” says Andria McKay, director of brand, thought leadership and health content at Medcan.
This year, the lounge moves to the second floor of the venue, where VIP guests will find interactive experiences designed to help them “learn a little bit more about their own health.”
Dr. Jason Abrams, vice-president of medical affairs at Medcan, will join guests after his talk on Nov. 10. McKay calls the lounge a place to network and unwind away from the crowds on the festival’s five stages, outlined in HRD Canada’s breakdown of the HRFest Canada 2026 stages.
The audience brought Medcan back. “We found it was a very high-quality event, and again, the people that came out were really interested in having those discussions,” she says. HRD Canada earlier explored how Medcan’s VIP lounge puts wellbeing on the agenda.
Why chronic disease is now an HR issue
Increasingly, those discussions centre on chronic disease. The 2026 Benefits Canada Healthcare Survey found 62% of benefits plan members live with at least one chronic condition, and 36% manage more than one.
Many employers underestimate that scale. The same survey found plan sponsors estimated, on average, that only 37.6% of their workforce had a chronic condition – a gap of more than 24 percentage points.
That blind spot is costly. Manulife Canada’s Wellness Report, released in May 2026, found health-related absences and presenteeism – working while unwell and less productive – added up to the equivalent of 46 working days per employee each year. Drawn from 159 organizations with Manulife group benefits plans, it shows how burnout is costing Canadian employers 46 workdays.
A proactive path for workplace health
For Medcan, closing that gap starts with earlier intervention. The opportunity, McKay says, is to ask, “what if we could get ahead of that? How could we change the trajectory of health before it progresses into more serious disease?”
One example is the Galleri multi-cancer early detection test by GRAIL, which Medcan launched in Canada in October 2025 as its first official provider. “That test is an AI-enabled blood test that allows us to look for cancer, a cancer signal before symptoms even appear,” she says. Medcan notes the test does not diagnose cancer or detect a signal for every cancer.
Proving prevention pays off is harder. McKay admits return on investment (ROI) remains elusive: “determining an ROI from wellness is extremely challenging.” Instead, she flips the question: “What’s the cost of doing nothing?”
That question shapes her message to HRFest attendees. “First of all, do they know what’s happening from a health perspective?” she asks. She wants HR leaders to bring their top health issues to the lounge for “targeted conversations about what can be done to support those issues and support the employees so that they can live healthier and ... be the thriving individuals that they can be.”
