While Canada’s toxic drug crisis claims thousands of lives each year, one Sudbury doctor has built a multi-million-dollar empire prescribing pharmaceutical-grade opioids under the banner of “safer supply.” Dr. Suman Kumar Koka isn’t running a back-alley operation — he’s operating through taxpayer-funded OHIP billing and provincial drug plans, with a network of private clinics that critics describe as little more than legal drug distribution hubs.
Dr. Koka (CPSO #88116), an Indian family physician in his mid-40s, is the sole officer and director of Northwood Recovery and Recovery North. His clinics operate 15 registered practice locations across Ontario, stretching from Greater Sudbury (multiple sites in New Sudbury, Azilda, Paris Street, and the Medical Arts Centre) to Hamilton, North York, Manitoulin Island (Little Current, M’Chigeeng, Wikwemikong), Timmins, and Sault Ste. Marie, and remote First Nations communities. Until June 2025, the network also included high-profile sites in Ottawa’s Hintonburg and Chinatown neighbourhoods.
The flagship service: immediate-release hydromorphone tablets (Dilaudid® or generics) dispensed as “safer supply” — short-acting opioids handed out as take-home doses for people at high risk of fentanyl overdose. Unlike traditional opioid agonist therapy (OAT) such as methadone or Suboxone, which are long-acting and designed to stabilize patients and reduce cravings without a euphoric high, hydromorphone delivers the rapid hit many users seek. Its short half-life (typically 2–3 hours) means patients often need multiple doses daily, creating a cycle that critics say keeps people hooked rather than helping them recover.
The Money Trail: Millions in Public Funding
Koka’s operation is highly profitable — at least on paper. He billed the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) $2.3 million in 2023 and nearly $2.5 million in 2024, placing him in the top 1% of family physicians province-wide. Over $524,000 of the 2024 total came from virtual/telemedicine care alone. These are gross billings for assessments, follow-ups, and monitoring — not personal take-home pay — but the model relies on high patient volume, low-barrier access, and heavy delegation to staff or physician assistants. Many consultations never involve Koka in person.
The hydromorphone itself is covered by provincial drug plans (Ontario Drug Benefit, etc.), meaning taxpayers foot the bill for both the doctor visits and the pills. Pharmacies dispense the tablets and get reimbursed. No bulk government procurement or special contracts exist; it’s standard commercial supply from manufacturers like Purdue Pharma Canada (brand Dilaudid) and generics producers. But the explosion in prescribing — safer supply now accounts for roughly 22.5% of all oral hydromorphone dispensed in Ontario — has created massive commercial demand.
A Pattern of Scandals and Community Backlash
Koka’s model has drawn repeated scrutiny. In 2019, two patient complaints from his remote methadone and Suboxone clinic in Ohsweken on the Six Nations of the Grand River revealed that patients never met Dr. Koka in person; care was handled entirely by a physician assistant through phone or telemedicine appointments. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario issued him a verbal caution for maintaining inadequate doctor-patient relationships and improperly delegating care. That caution remains the only formal regulatory mark on his public CPSO profile.
Patient feedback on RateMDs tells a similar story. Across 47 reviews, he holds a 3.51 out of 5 average that is heavily skewed toward one-star ratings. Reviewers repeatedly report never seeing the doctor themselves, staff allegedly impersonating him on prescriptions, rude or unprofessional service, and an operation that feels more like a high-volume prescription mill than genuine medical care.
In 2023, the family of a long-term care resident at Extendicare York in Sudbury sued Koka and others, alleging incompetent and deficient care, including poor assessments, inadequate monitoring, and failure to follow proper clinical procedures. No public resolution or settlement details have been reported.
The most visible backlash came in Ottawa between 2024 and 2025. When Northwood Recovery opened in Hintonburg and later quietly relocated to Chinatown on Somerset Street West, residents and Councillor Ariel Troster documented immediate spikes in open drug use, discarded Dilaudid bottles and needles, street dealing, overdoses, and related crime right outside the clinic doors. The Chinatown location closed under Koka’s ownership on June 9, 2025, after sustained community pressure. Patients were transferred elsewhere, and the site reportedly reopened the same day under new management by another operator, New Dawn Medical.
This pattern is not isolated. Similar private, doctor-owned or doctor-led chains — such as trueNorth Medical and New Dawn Medical — operate across Ontario using the same telemedicine-heavy, high-volume safer-supply model.
Dr. Martyn Judson’s Blunt Warning
London, Ontario, addiction physician Dr. Martyn Judson — with 30+ years of treating opioid dependence at Clinic 528 — testified before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health (HESA) in September 2024. He called the current safer supply system an “abdication” of responsibility by Health Canada and the CPSO:
“In the mid-1990s, methadone prescribing was closely regulated by Health Canada and the CPSO… protocols necessary to achieve these goals were followed strictly, and patient safety and improved health were noted. Both Health Canada and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario have seemingly abdicated all responsibility for oversight, resulting in many physicians and pharmacists engaging in the practice of prescribing short-acting opioids, which aggravate addiction.”
Judson contrasted today’s unregulated, short-acting hydromorphone with the tightly controlled methadone programs of the past. He argued that the lack of monitoring, training requirements, and oversight has destabilized patients, increased diversion, and turned what was once a successful, structured recovery model into a profit-driven free-for-all.
A Program Built on Short Half-Life Addiction?
Hydromorphone’s short half-life lies at the very heart of the controversy. Users frequently cycle between brief periods of relief and rapid withdrawal, driving many to supplement with street drugs or divert their prescribed doses. Studies show diversion rates as high as 20–40 percent in some programs, with street prices for hydromorphone collapsing in communities where safer supply clinics operate.
Critics point out that this outcome was foreseeable. Before British Columbia launched its landmark Risk Mitigation Guidance in March 2020, Dr. Julian Somers — a Simon Fraser University psychologist who led a two-decade, multimillion-dollar longitudinal study on addiction, homelessness, and criminality — had publicly stated that the provincial government ignored his evidence-based findings and, after a briefing it disliked, ordered the immediate destruction of existing monitoring activities. Instead of heeding decades of data that supported tightly regulated, long-acting treatment models, officials rushed ahead with short-acting hydromorphone under the harm-reduction banner.
What was sold to the public as compassionate harm reduction has, in practice, become a taxpayer-subsidized pharmaceutical distribution network. Doctors like Suman Koka bill the public system millions while pharmacies are reimbursed for the pills — all while long-acting, evidence-based treatments such as methadone and Suboxone are often sidelined in favour of short-acting hydromorphone.
As Dr. Martyn Judson warned Parliament, weak federal and provincial oversight has allowed profit motives to override patient safety and clinical best practices.
The question Canadians must now confront is this: Are we truly helping people trapped in addiction, or have certain doctors partnered with pharmaceutical companies to turn a devastating national crisis into a highly profitable enterprise?