Health Care Wait Times

Waiting Your Turn: Wait Times for Health Care in Canada, 2023 Report

— Dec 7, 2023

Waiting Your Turn: Wait Times for Health Care in Canada, 2023 is an annual survey of physicians across Canada, finding a median wait time of 27.7 weeks—the longest ever recorded—with national wait times longest between a referral by a GP and plastic, orthopaedic, and neurosurgery, while shortest for radiation and medical oncology treatments.

Mental Health Care: How is Canada Doing?

— Oct 10, 2023

Mental Health Care: How is Canada Doing? compares Canada’s mental health services to other countries with universally accessible health care and finds that, despite the Canadian government spending a larger share of health dollars on mental health services, Canada has relatively fewer psychiatric care beds (ranking 22nd out of 28 nations), psychiatrists (ranking 16th out of 28 nations), and psychologists (ranking 15th out of 26 nations) in addition to growing wait times.

Waiting Your Turn: Wait Times for Health Care in Canada, 2022 Report

— Dec 8, 2022

Waiting Your Turn: Wait Times for Health Care in Canada, 2022 is a new study that finds Canada’s health-care wait times reached 27.4 weeks in 2022—the longest ever recorded—and 195 per cent higher than the 9.3 weeks Canadians waited in 1993, when the Fraser Institute began tracking medical wait times. Before this year, the longest recorded wait time was 25.6 weeks in 2021. Prince Edward Island has the longest wait times in the country this year, and Ontario recorded the shortest wait time, which was still more than five months long.

Recent Health Care Wait Times Commentaries and Blog Posts

B.C. government must fundamentally reform health care to shorten wait times

Mackenzie Moir, Tegan Hill

Appeared in Drishti Magazine, April 4, 2024

In 2021/22, 41 per cent of all hospital care in Australia took place in private facilities.

Health-care wait times in New Brunswick nearly double national average

Alex Whalen, Mackenzie Moir

New Brunswickers who required medically-necessary surgeries endured a median wait for treatment of 52.6 weeks.

Alberta should learn from other higher-performing universal health-care systems

Nadeem Esmail

The province's average wait time for health care grew from 18.5 weeks in 2008 to 33.5 weeks in 2023.

Canadian patients face long waits for diagnostic imaging

Mackenzie Moir

The median wait in 2023 for an MRI was 12.9 weeks—two weeks longer than last year.

Albertans endure some of the longest health-care waits in Canada

Mackenzie Moir, Tegan Hill

Appeared in the Calgary Sun, December 20, 2023

The province's median wait between referral and receipt of treatment was 33.5 weeks.

Canadians face longest health-care wait times on record

Bacchus Barua, Mackenzie Moir

Appeared in the Toronto Sun, December 13, 2023

The median wait time between referral from a family doctor to treatment now stands at 27.7 weeks.

Ontarians pay high price for health-care waits

Mackenzie Moir

Appeared in the Hamilton Spectator, November 18, 2023

Patients in the province face a median wait of 20.3 weeks for medically necessary care.

B.C.’s health-care wait times only getting longer

Mackenzie Moir

Wait times in the province more than doubled from 10.4 weeks in 1993 to 25.8 weeks in 2022.

New health minister should not repeat predecessor’s mistakes

Mackenzie Moir, Bacchus Barua

Canada now has the most expensive universal health-care system in the world.

Wait times for health care cost Albertans $600 million

Ben Eisen, Bacchus Barua

An estimated 181,333 Albertans faced a median wait of 19.2 weeks between specialist consultation and treatment.