Over 74,000 Canadians have died since 2018 while waiting for essential healthcare procedures, including at least 15,474 deaths in 2023-24 due to delayed surgeries and diagnostic scans, with Ontario reporting 378 deaths from cardiac procedure delays alone. Incomplete data suggests the true number may be higher, underscoring a critical issue with healthcare wait times in Canada.
National Post — 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.
“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.”
h/t External-Noise-4832
