Emergency Room Wait Times Up Across Canada: Federal Data

A health care worker makes his way into the Emergency Department of the Vancouver General Hospital in Vancouver on March 30, 2020. Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press

Close to 14 million Canadians visited an emergency room between April 2021 and March 2022 and those patients faced increased wait times at hospitals across the country, according to data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).

The data released by CIHI on Dec. 8 shows that 90 percent of emergency department visits for patients who were admitted to hospital in 2021-2022 were completed within 40.7 hours—up from 33.5 hours the year prior.

The time spent waiting for a bed varied widely by province, according to the CIHI figures.

Alberta saw 90 percent of visits completed within 27 hours, up slightly from 26.2 the year prior. In Ontario, 90 percent of patients spent 32.5 hours in the ED, up from 29.1 in 2020.

In B.C. such emergency visits were the longest at 47.7 hours, compared with 32.8 hours the year prior.

The CIHI data is dependent on hospitals sending their figures to the National Ambulatory Care Reporting System (NACRS). Therefore, comparing figures by jurisdiction may not represent the full picture as not all facilities report to NACRS.

Reasons for ED Visit

The CIHI data show that abdominal and pelvic pain was responsible for the majority of reasons patients attended the ED, followed by pain in the throat and chest, and then back pain.

COVID-19 was the 4th most frequent main problem diagnosis, up from 10th in 2020-2021. Acute upper respiratory infections were seventh on the list of most common problems.

The data also shows that emergency room visits dropped in 2021-2022 to about 14 million visits. In the two years before COVID-19, there were about 15 million visits to emergency rooms.

CIHI also found that babies and toddlers are back in the emergency room at pre-pandemic volumes. In 2021-2022, 1,038,994 children under the age of four visited an ED, which was up 83 percent from the year prior at 567,073.

In November, nearly all children’s hospitals across Canada reported being overwhelmed with sick kids, most running at 100 percent occupancy or more due to respiratory and flu infections, with wait times ranging from a low of 4 hours to up to 24 hours in some provinces.

Other Wait Times

Survey results from the Fraser Institute also found that Canadians are now waiting longer than ever if they need to see a specialist, obtain diagnostic procedures, or undergo surgery.

This year, an estimated 1,228,047 Canadians are waiting for procedures in 10 provinces. This is roughly 3.2 percent of the country’s population, assuming each person is only waiting for one medical treatment.

The Fraser Institute says that in the nearly 30 years it has been documenting how long it takes for patients to receive necessary medical treatment, this year’s wait time of 27.4 weeks is the longest in the three decades the survey has been conducted.