more than 74,000 canadians have died on health-care wait lists since 2018: report
at least 15,474 canadians died in 2023-24 alone before receiving various surgeries or diagnostic scans. the true number is likely double
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"thousands of canadians across the country find themselves on wait lists — in some cases for several years — with too many tragically dying before ever getting treated or even diagnosed," the report says.
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at least 15,000 canadians died while waiting for surgery or a diagnostic scan over the course of a year, according to government data collected by public policy think tank secondstreet.org.
the true figure for the fiscal year 2023-24 is likely nearly double owing to a “huge hole” in the data, said secondstreet president colin craig. missing are data from quebec, alberta, newfoundland and labrador and most of manitoba.
the government health bodies that did respond to freedom of information (foi) requests represent 62 per cent of the population. “if the findings from the provinces that did give us data are extrapolated across provinces that didn’t, the total rises to closer to 28,000 people,” craig said.
the report is the latest “died on a waiting list” policy brief from secondstreet since the conservative-leaning organization began tracking wait-list deaths in the spring of 2018. since then, the think tank has counted 74,677 cases where canadians passed away while waiting for treatments. these range from potentially life-saving ones, such as heart operations or cancer therapy, to life-enhancing ones, such as cataract surgeries and hip replacements.
despite historically high levels of health spending across canada, “it is clear that money alone cannot solve this health care crisis,” according to the report.
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“canadians pay really high taxes and yet our health care system is failing when compared to better-performing universal systems in europe,” harrison fleming, legislative and policy director at secondstreet, said in a release. “thousands of canadians across the country find themselves on wait lists — in some cases for several years — with too many tragically dying before ever getting treated or even diagnosed.”
“we’re not aware of any government in canada that tracks this data with purpose,” craig said. instead, it appears to be tracked by chance.
“someone phones up and says, ‘i just want to let you know that my husband passed away, so he no longer needs surgery.’ and the person running the (wait-list management software) clicks on a box that asks why is this surgery being cancelled. ‘oh, the patient died.’
“we’re not aware of any government that really analyzes this data, looks at it and makes changes based on, ‘we’ve got a lot of patients dying while waiting for procedure x.’ that’s what should happen.”
for their latest report, secondstreet filed foi requests across canada with more than 30 government health departments, health authorities and health regions for cases where people were removed from surgical and diagnostic waiting lists between april 1, 2023 and march 31, 2024 because they died.
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only 12 health bodies in seven provinces provided full or partial data. alberta no longer tracks the data, craig said, despite providing information five years in a row.
according to the report, at least 15,474 people died in canada in fiscal 2023-24 while on a surgical or diagnostic wait list. waits varied, from less than one week to more than 14 years.
according to the information health bodies provided, 11,682 people died while waiting for an mri, colonoscopy or other diagnostic scan while 3,792 died while waiting for surgery.
surgical waitlist deaths were down from the previous year in health bodies with five years of data. ontario saw a year-over-year decline from 2,096 in 2022-23 to 1,935. diagnostic scan waitlist deaths also decreased in ontario from 9,404 to 7,947.
“obviously that’s a positive sign,” craig said. “but i don’t think anyone should be celebrating that we still have thousands of people in ontario dying while waiting for surgery or diagnostic scans.”
recent data from ontario health suggests 378 people died 2023-24 while waiting for heart surgery or a cardiac procedure, he said. what’s not clear is “how many of those patients died because the system simply took too long,” craig said.
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until recently, nova scotia had provided the most robust data to clear up some of the ambiguity, according to the report. of 532 total wait-list deaths in 2022-23, the nova scotia government responded that 50 deaths “involved procedures where delays in treatment might reasonably be implicated causally.” those deaths included people waiting for bowel surgery, cancer surgery or coronary artery bypass surgery. of the 50 deaths, 19 people had waited beyond the maximum recommended wait times.
nova scotia didn’t provide a similar analysis for its latest data.
“we do have a lot of cautions in the report,” craig said. “the first thing that we know is that the data suggest that in a lot of these cases these aren’t patients dying while waiting for life-saving treatment.”
“a lot of these cases are things like cataract surgery and hip operations. but we shouldn’t shrug our shoulders, because many of these patients would have suffered in their final years with cloudy vision or chronic pain,” craig said. “it’s very inhumane to leave someone stuck in their apartment with chronic pain for a couple of years before they get their hip operation and eventually pass away.”
in other cases, “people are dying while waiting for heart operations, cancer treatments — things that could potentially save their lives. in an ideal world governments would beak down the difference between those two data sets.”
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the montreal gazette’s aaron derfel reported last year that two-thirds of quebec heart patients needing surgery were waiting beyond the medically acceptable delay of 90 days, “with some stuck in limbo for as long as a year while others are dying before ever receiving a call for their operation.”
nationally, canadians are waiting longer than they did in 2019, before the pandemic, for “priority” procedures such as hip and knee replacements and cancer surgeries, according to the canadian institute for health information.
canada is among the highest spenders in health care. spending was expected to reach $372 billion in 2024, according to cihi.
among other policy recommendations, governments should track, analyze and disclose data on wait-list deaths each year to “remove ambiguity” around deaths “while improving accountability,” the secondstreet report said.
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