Medical equipment in a clinical setting. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
The number of Canadians waiting for health care, including surgeries, to see specialists, or to receive diagnostic scans, has risen to over 3.1 million in the past year.
Data from SecondStreet.org, a think tank that focuses on the impact of government decisions on Canadians, tracking how many patients are waiting for health care showed that the number was 3,134,853 as of Dec. 26. That is an increase of about 140,000 since 2022, the organization said.
“Overall, we’ve seen a rise in patients waiting. This is not good news,” SecondStreet.org communications director Dom Lucyk said in a statement.
“We’ve seen positive movement in some parts of the country, but overall, we’re going in the wrong direction.”
Surgical Waitlist Results
Of all the provinces, Saskatchewan, Quebec, and Manitoba were able to reduce the number of people on surgical and diagnostic waitlists, SecondStreet said. However, data from Manitoba is not comprehensive as it only covers four types of surgeries and five types of diagnostic testing.
The findings also showed that Ontario was able to reduce the number of those on a surgical waitlist by 6.2 percent, but those waiting for diagnostic scans rose nearly 44 percent.
Over the past year, the number of people on a surgical waitlist in B.C. has gone up by 3.4 percent. In Alberta, that number is 1.6 percent higher than in 2022.