Health Care Wait Times in Canada Hit Record High at 27.7 Weeks: Report

A health-care worker transports a patient at the Humber River Hospital in Toronto on Dec. 9, 2020. (The Canadian Press/Nathan Denette)

Canada’s average health care wait times have hit a record high of 27.7 weeks, according to a recently-released report by the Fraser Institute.

The 27.7-week figure is the longest wait time in the survey’s 30-year history and is 198 percent longer than the 1993 average of 9.3 weeks.

While the pandemic has played a role in increased patient wait times, it is not completely to blame, said one of the report’s authors.

“COVID-19 and related hospital closures have exacerbated, but are not the cause, of Canada’s historic wait times challenges,” Fraser Institute director of health policy studies Bacchus Barua said in a press release. “Previous results revealed that patients waited an estimated 20.9 weeks for medically necessary elective care in 2019—long before the pandemic started.”

The data, which was collected in a survey with responses from 1,200 Canadian doctors across 12 specialties and 10 provinces, singled Nova Scotia out as the province with the longest wait time: 56.7 weeks. Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick had similarly high wait times of 55.2 weeks and 52.6 weeks respectively.

Average wait times in Alberta, Newfoundland, and Saskatchewan came in at 33.5 weeks, 33.3 weeks, and 31 weeks while Manitoba averaged 29.1 weeks. British Columbia’s average wait time was 27.7 weeks and Quebec’s was 27.6 weeks. Ontario patients had the shortest wait time with an average of 21.6 weeks.

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“Excessively long wait times remain a defining characteristic of Canada’s health-care system,” Fraser Institute policy analyst and co-author of the report Mackenzie Moir said in a press release. “And they aren’t simply minor inconveniences, they can result in increased suffering for patients, lost productivity at work, a decreased quality of life, and in the worst cases, disability or death.”

Specialist and Surgery Wait Times

The average 27.7-week wait time patients face can be broken down into a 14.6-week wait time to see a specialist after referral by a general practitioner and a 13.1-week wait between consultation with a specialist and receipt of treatment.

Doctors who responded to the survey said their patients should not have to wait longer than 8.5 weeks to see a specialist, making the additional 4.6 weeks they wait for treatment “clinically” unreasonable.

While the average wait time to see a radiation oncology specialist or a medical oncology specialist falls within the “reasonable” time range at 4.4 weeks and 4.8 weeks respectively, none of the other wait times did.

Cardiovascular surgery had an average wait of 13.1 weeks until treatment, while those needing general surgeries waited 21.7 weeks on average. Gynecology wait times averaged 37.4 weeks.

Neurosurgery and orthopaedic surgery were significantly above what doctors considered a reasonable wait time, coming in at 43.5 weeks and 44.3 weeks respectively. The longest wait time for Canadians is for plastic surgery with an average wait of 52.4 weeks.

Patients also face considerable delays for other procedures and diagnostic technology, the report notes.

Across the 10 provinces, “there were 1,209,194 procedures for which patients—three percent of the Canadian population—were waiting in 2023,” the report’s authors said in a news release. This year, Canadians could also expect to wait 6.6 weeks for a CT scan, 12.9 weeks for an MRI, and 5.3 weeks for an ultrasound.

“Research has repeatedly indicated that wait times for medically necessary treatment are not benign inconveniences,” the report notes. “Wait times can, and do, have serious consequences … In certain instances, they can also result in poorer medical outcomes—transforming potentially reversible illnesses or injuries into chronic, irreversible conditions, or even permanent disabilities.”

The Fraser Institute report comes just days after a report from SecondStreet.org stated that the number of Canadian patients who have died while on a waiting list for medical care is at a five-year high.

The report found that at least 17,032 patients died while awaiting surgery or diagnostic scans between April 1, 2022, and March 31, 2023.

Data from the past five years shows a 64 percent increase in annual surgical waiting list deaths since 2018, according to the report. In total, more than 58,600 patients have died while waiting for care since April 2018.