Healthcare Category Draws: Which Occupations Actually Sit Inside

Here’s the fact that surprises people who’ve been watching this space for a while: as of 2026, doctors are no longer included in the general healthcare occupation category in Canada. They got pulled out into their own dedicated Physicians category, announced in December 2025 specifically to boost Canada’s supply of doctors, and it now runs separately with its own draws and its own cut-off. So the question of which occupations are included where has a different answer than it did a year ago.

That first Physicians round, on 19 February 2026, invited 391 candidates at a Comprehensive Ranking System score of just 169 — the lowest cut-off recorded anywhere in Express Entry since the pandemic era. A second round followed in June at CRS 223. If you’re a physician, or advising one, that’s the category to watch specifically — not the broader healthcare category most other health occupations still sit inside.

The broader healthcare category, and how long it’s actually run

The Healthcare and Social Services Occupations category (running under various version names — Healthcare occupations Version 1 through 2024, Healthcare and social services occupations Version 2 in 2025, Version 3 for 2026) isn’t new. It was one of the original four categories at the very first category-based round ever held on 28 June 2023, and it has run consistently since — six Version 1 rounds, seven more under Version 2, with sizes ranging from 500 invitations up to 3,750 in a single round. This is one of the more durable categories in the system.

What we can’t hand you: the actual occupation list

Here’s the honest limit. Which specific occupations — nurses, allied health roles, health technologists, social service workers — are included in this category’s eligible list right now isn’t something Cape2Canada’s research pins down with a verified, current NOC-code breakdown. Occupation lists inside categories change from year to year, sometimes within a year, and republishing an old list as current would be exactly the kind of stale, confidently-wrong content this project tries not to produce. The same goes for the minimum months of experience the category requires — check IRCC’s own category-based selection page for the current, exact criteria before you plan around anything printed here, including this.

The point that matters more than the occupation list

This is worth saying plainly, because it’s the single most consequential thing a South African nurse, allied health worker or physician reading about this category needs to understand: an invitation under the healthcare category is an immigration event, not a licensing one. Being invited to apply for permanent residence through this category does not grant you the right to practise your profession in Canada. That’s an entirely separate, provincial process — NNAS for internationally educated nurses, the MCCQE and CaRMS route (or the faster Practice-Ready Assessment for experienced doctors) for physicians, and each profession’s own provincial regulator for everyone else. The two tracks run in parallel and neither substitutes for the other. The rule to hold on to is that licensing is separate from immigration for health workers, always. Plenty of people get the immigration side and land, then are startled to learn the licensing side hasn’t even started.

What to actually do with this

If your occupation sits somewhere in health care, check the current category eligibility list on IRCC’s own page rather than an old blog post’s summary, and start your provincial licensing research at the same time as your immigration profile — not after you land. The two clocks run independently, and starting only one of them is the mistake that costs people years.

Cape2Canada’s free Express Entry Explained guide covers how these categories sit inside the wider CRS system.