Canadians are now waiting longer than ever for medical care.
A new study by the Fraser Institute found that the median wait time between a referral from a general practitioner and receiving treatment reached a record 30 weeks nationally. In contrast, the same survey found that Canadians waited 27.7 weeks on average last year.
Canadians today wait 222% longer than the 9.3 median weeks wait time recorded in 1993.
The study uses an annual survey the Fraser Institute has been conducting for over 30 years. It asks specialists across 12 specialties and 10 provinces about the wait times their patients face.
“Canada’s healthcare system is struggling to provide timely care,” Mackenzie Moir, a study co-author, told True North in an interview. “Long delays for care can result in increased and prolonged suffering for patients, alongside a decreased quality of life.”
He said long wait times for medical care could also lead to a loss of productivity and, in the worst cases, disability or death.
Another Fraser Institute study in May found that long wait times for surgeries and medical treatment cost the 1.2 million Canadians waiting for medically necessary treatment an average of $2,871 worth of time they could have spent working.
The most recent study examined two measures: the time between a general practitioner’s consultation with a specialist and the time from specialist consultations to receiving treatment, also at an average of 15 weeks.
The wait time between receiving a referral from a general practitioner and consulting a specialist was found to increase from 14.6 weeks in 2023 to 15 weeks in 2024. This wait time is over four times longer than the 3.7 weeks reported in 1993.
From specialist consultation to the time a patient receives treatment, the wait time increased from 13.1 weeks to 15 weeks over the last year. That’s 167% longer than it was in 1993 and 6.3 weeks longer than the 8.6-week wait time physicians consider “clinically reasonable.”
The Atlantic provinces had the highest wait times and most measured the largest increases from the previous year.
Prince Edward Island, which the study indicated had low numbers of survey respondents, reported a 22.2-week increase in average wait times from last year. It went from reporting 55.2-week wait times from a referral to receiving treatment in 2023 to reporting a 77.4-week wait. This is up from the just 17.1-week wait time recorded in 1993.
Nova Scotia, on the other hand, had the lowest wait times of the Atlantic provinces, though still higher than the rest of the provinces. NS was the only province to record a decrease in the overall wait time for patients. NS practitioners reported an average wait time of 39.1 weeks in total for 2024, down 17.6 weeks from the 56.7 weeks reported in 2023.
Ontario reported the shortest total wait time of 23.6 weeks in 2024, still up by two weeks when compared to 2023 and a far cry from the average 9.1 weeks it recorded in 1993.
The study also compared wait times for various types of referrals and specialists.
Canadians waiting for orthopaedic surgery faced the longest total wait times, averaging 57.5 weeks. For neurosurgeries, an average of 46.2 weeks across the provinces. The shortest wait times were reported for radiation and medical oncology treatments at 4.5 and 4.7 weeks, respectively.
For those needing medical services involving diagnostic technology, the wait times varied. Specialists reported an 8.1-week average for those needing a CT scan appointment, MRIs clocked in at a median of 16.2 weeks, and ultrasounds had Canadians waiting an average of 5.2 weeks.
This comes after a November poll found that nearly half of Canadians avoided visiting healthcare providers due to long wait times.
Though the study did not examine the factors leading to record-breaking wait times in Canada, Moir told True North that governments could take short-term action to tackle the issue. He said governments could hire private clinics for specialist procedures, as Saskatchewan successfully implemented lowering its wait times.