If you have visited an ER or waited for a pre-planned surgery this year, the latest report from the Fraser Institute on Canadian Health Care wait times will come as no surprise.
Fraser Institute
The median wait time for treatment in Canada for the year 2022 was 27.4 weeks, up from 25.6 weeks in 2021.
Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think tank, has been studying wait times across Canada by surveying specialist physicians across 12 specialties and 10 provinces since 1993. This year’s wait time is the longest wait time recorded in this survey’s history and is 195% longer than in 1993 when it was just 9.3 weeks.
The report finds that COVID–19 and related hospital closures have exacerbated Canada’s historic wait times challenges. Patients waited an estimated 20.9 weeks for medically necessary care in 2019 — long before the pandemic started.
Fraser Institute collected data from physicians for the study between January 10 to September 15, 2022. The organization received 850 responses across 12 specialties (975 when psychiatrists are included). The response rate was 7.1% – a lower response rate than in previous years – and as a result, report authors say the findings in this report should be interpreted with caution.
The report, Waiting Your Turn, finds that patients in Ontario experience the shortest total wait at 20.3 weeks followed by British Columbia (25.8 weeks) and Quebec (29.4 weeks), while Prince Edward Island reported the longest at 64.7 weeks, followed by Nova Scotia (58.2 weeks) and New Brunswick (43.3 weeks).
Fraser Institute
The report splits the wait times into two parts – referral by a general practitioner to consultation with a specialist and from the consultation with a specialist to the point at which the patient receives treatment.
In Ontario, patients waited an average of 10.1 weeks to see a specialist after being referred to by a family doctor and then another 10.2 weeks for treatment. While in PEI, they had to wait 41.7 months to see a specialist and 23 weeks for treatment.
The wait for treatment after seeing a specialist is highest in Manitoba at 25.4 weeks.
Physicians say their patients are waiting over six weeks longer for treatment (after seeing a specialist) than what they consider to be clinically reasonable.
Fraser Institute/Waiting Your Turn 2022
Surgery wait times:
Among the various specialties, the national wait times were the longest between a referral by a GP referral and neurosurgical procedures (58.9 weeks), plastic surgery (58.1 weeks), and orthopedic surgery (48.4 weeks) and shortest for radiation oncology (3.9 weeks), medical oncology (4.4 weeks), and elective cardiovascular surgery (16.4 weeks).
The interval from consultation with a specialist to the point at which the patient receives treatment is the shortest for urgent cardiovascular
surgery (2.0 weeks), medical oncology (2.3 weeks), and radiation oncology (2.4 weeks).
Fraser Institute/Waiting Your Turn 2022
Diagnostic wait times:
Canadians are also experiencing significant waiting times for various diagnostic technologies across the provinces with an expected wait time of 5.4 weeks for a computed tomography (CT) scan, 10.6 weeks for a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan, and 4.9 weeks for an ultrasound.
Fraser Institute report estimates that, across the 10 provinces, the total number of procedures for which people are waiting in 2022 is 1,228,047. This means that assuming that each person waits for only one procedure, 3.2% of Canadians are waiting for treatment in 2022.
The proportion of the population waiting for treatment varies from a low of 2.44% in Ontario to a high of 6.05% in Newfoundland & Labrador.
The report also says about 11.03% of their patients are on a waiting list because they requested a delay or postponement.
“Excessively long wait times remain a defining characteristic of Canada’s health care system,” said Mackenzie Moir, Fraser Institute policy analyst and co-author of the report.
“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.”
A detailed report is given here — Waiting Your Turn: Wait Times for Health Care in Canada, 2021 Report.