'COVID-19 and related hospital closures have exacerbated, but are not the cause of, Canada's historic wait times challenges'
Surgical wait times in Canada had never been longer than now.
The country had a median wait time of 25.6 weeks in 2021, according to a report from Fraser Institute, following the longest wait period previously of 22.6 weeks recorded in 2020.
“The results of this year’s survey suggest that COVID-19 and related hospital closures have exacerbated, but are not the cause of, Canada’s historic wait times challenges,” says Bacchus Barua, director of the Fraser Institute’s Centre for Health Policy Studies.
Two-thirds of Canadians living with a chronic illness or major illness have faced challenges accessing treatment and care because of the pandemic, according to a previous report.
“Results from the same survey reveal that patients waited an estimated 20.9 weeks for medically necessary elective care in 2019 —long before the pandemic started,” says Barua.
The 2019 data was also up from 19.8 weeks median wait time in 2018.
Among provinces, Ontario has the shortest (18.5 weeks) wait time, up 17.4 weeks in 2020. Newfoundland and Labrador has the second short wait time of 21.1 weeks, down from 29.2 weeks in 2020.
Wait times for the rest are far longer:
- Nova Scotia, 53.2 weeks, up from 43.8 weeks in 2020
- Prince Edward Island, 41.6 weeks, down from 46.5 weeks in 2020
- New Brunswick, 41.3 weeks, down from 41.3 weeks in 2020
- Alberta, 32.1 weeks in 2021, up from 29.4 weeks in 2020
- Manitoba, 31.5 weeks, up from 23.7 weeks in 2020
- Saskatchewan, 30.9 weeks, up from 21.7 weeks in 2020
- Quebec, 29.1 weeks, up from 18.8 weeks in 2020
- British Columbia, 26.2 weeks in 2021, down from 26.6 weeks in 2020
The Canadian economy lost almost $2.1 billion in lost productivity and wages in 2019 due to long wait times for surgery and other medical treatments, according to a separate Fraser Institute study.
Delays for MRIs, CT scans
Patients also experience significant waiting times for various diagnostic technologies across the country: 10.2 weeks for a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan, 5.2 weeks for a computed tomography (CT) scan and 3.6 weeks for an ultrasound.
Crucially, physicians report that their patients are waiting six weeks longer for treatment after seeing a specialist than what they consider to be clinically reasonable, found the survey of more than 1,100 physicians.
“Excessively long wait times remain a defining characteristic of Canada’s health-care system” says 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.”
