Roughly 500,000 Canadians left ERs before seeing a doctor last year, data shows
CBC
About a half a million Canadians left emergency departments before being seen by a doctor in 2024, according to a data analysis by CBC’s Marketplace.
And because B.C. and Quebec report these figures based on the fiscal calendar (and include parts of 2025), that number is likely a lot higher.
The 2024 statistics collected from most provinces and territories show Prince Edward Island had the highest percentage of people leaving, at roughly 14 per cent.
Manitoba had the second-highest percentage at about 13 per cent and New Brunswick the third-highest, at roughly 12 per cent. Ontario had the lowest percentage, at roughly five per cent.
The data also shows the trend has increased since 2019, when in most cases, fewer than 10 per cent of people were walking out before seeing a physician.
In some places, like Newfoundland and Labrador, the number of people leaving has almost doubled since 2019, with more than 35,000 people walking out in the Maritime province in 2024.
Marketplace's analysis is based on data it and the Montreal Economic Institute received through freedom of information requests.
Dr. Fraser MacKay, an emergency physician in New Brunswick and a board director of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians (CAEP), says it’s a side-effect of long wait times in emergency departments.
"It's rare that a shift will go by where one of the patients I'll see isn't someone that was there yesterday or the day before and couldn't handle the wait and left. And now they come back and now they're that much sicker,” he said.
Marketplace's analysis also shows the amount of time people spend waiting to first see a doctor and the total time they're in the ER is growing from coast to coast.
MacKay and others say the root causes of the problem are complex, and include staff shortages, a lack of family doctors and “boarded patients” — that is, people who have been admitted in a different part of a hospital but are stuck in the emergency department waiting for a bed to open up.
"We've been very clear for many, many years: we know these problems, we know they're getting worse,” MacKay said.
In New Brunswick, where MacKay works, nearly 60,000 people walked out, according to the data.
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