Photo credit to Alberta Health Services.
Alberta patients faced some of the longest waits for medical treatment in 2024, according to a study released today by the Fraser Institute, an independent Canadian public policy think tank.
The study, Waiting Your Turn: Wait Times for Health Care in Canada, 2024, reports that the median wait time from referral by a general practitioner to treatment by a specialist in Alberta reached 38.4 weeks this year. Alberta's 2024 wait times outpaced those in Saskatchewan (37.2 weeks) and Manitoba (37.9 weeks), placing the province among the hardest hit by these delays.
This is a significant increase from 33.5 weeks in 2023 and well above the national median wait time of 30 weeks—the longest recorded in the study's history. By comparison, Ontario recorded the shortest wait times at 23.6 weeks, while Prince Edward Island had the longest at 77.4 weeks.
Graphic credit to the Fraser Institute.
"While most Canadians understand that wait times are a major problem, we've now reached an unprecedented and unfortunate milestone for delayed access to care," said Bacchus Barua, director of health policy studies at the Fraser Institute and co-author of the study.
Alberta’s wait times have steadily grown over the years, far surpassing the 20.9 weeks reported nationally in 2019 before the pandemic and significantly longer than the 9.3 weeks recorded in 1993 when the Fraser Institute began tracking wait times.
Among medical specialties, the study highlights that wait times for orthopedic surgery remain the longest nationally, at a median of 57.5 weeks. Shorter waits were seen for radiation treatment (4.5 weeks) and medical oncology treatments (4.7 weeks). For diagnostic technologies, wait times for MRIs were the longest, with patients waiting a median of 16.2 weeks, followed by CT scans (8.1 weeks) and ultrasounds (5.2 weeks).
The Fraser Institute underlined the broad impacts of these delays, with co-author Mackenzie Moir noting, "Long wait times can result in increased suffering for patients, lost productivity at work, a decreased quality of life, and in the worst cases, disability or death."
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