2026-07-31 from asatunews.co
Emergency room wait times across Canada have surged 28 percent compared to previous years, with millions of patients facing extensive delays for medical care, according to a recent report by the Canadian Institutes of Health Information for the 2024-25 period. The latest data highlights severe bottlenecks in hospital admissions nationwide. Approximately 1.5 million patients waited more than 14 hours to receive treatment or be admitted through emergency departments.
Furthermore, one in 10 patients, totaling around 180,000 individuals, spent up to 48 hours in the emergency room waiting for an available hospital bed.
The prolonged wait times are not primarily caused by operations within the emergency departments themselves. Cheryl Chiu, director for health system analytics for the Canadian Institutes of Health Information, indicated that the delays are deeply connected to the broader collapse of primary care.
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