1 in 7 ER visits in Canada are for conditions that could have been managed in primary care: report

Lack of access to family doctors and other primary care providers leaves more Canadians with no option than to go to the emergency department for care, new data suggests.

About one in seven visits to the emergency department in Canada are for conditions that could have been managed by a family doctor or other primary care provider like a nurse practitioner or pediatrician and roughly half of those visits could have been managed virtually, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).

Thursday's report focuses on primary and virtual care access through the lens of visits to emergency departments between April 2023 and March 2024.

The institute previously reported over five million Canadian adults say they don't have a family health provider, and even those who do say they experience major challenges getting access to timely care.

Now, CIHI developed a new indicator to gauge how hard it is to access care: emergency department visits for conditions that could potentially be managed in primary care.

Sunita Karmakar-Hore, CIHI's manager of health system performance reporting in Toronto, said people who report that they don't have access to a doctor at a walk-in clinic or their own family doctor have slightly more visits to the emergency department for primary care conditions during weekdays.

"What's surprising is that even for people that report that they do have access to a primary care doctor, the percentage of visits for conditions that could be managed in primary care is still high," said Karmakar-Hore. "It's about 13 per cent, and those visits are happening on the weekends."

Those emergency visits are happening the most for little kids.

Among children aged two to nine, 26 per cent of emergency department visits were for types of conditions that could be managed potentially in primary care, such as for antibiotic prescriptions, colds, sore throats, ear infections and prescription refills. The rate was markedly higher than for other age groups, CIHI said.

"This is telling us that parents of young children are really struggling to get care when they need it," she said.

"If you're lucky enough to have a family doctor, but ... you can't get in for a week or two, parents can't really wait that long. They're worried."

Conditions can escalate quickly in younger age groups, Karmakar-Hore said, and parents are often forced to turn to the emergency department for their children.

The report covers fiscal years 2022-24, and includes data from Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Yukon.

The new indicators aim to drive improvement efforts in access to primary and virtual care.