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The Health Council’s latest report on wait times takes a patient’s perspective — through a true story about Frank, a hip replacement patient — to review the new patient wait time guarantees and demonstrate the country’s progress in reducing wait times for non-emergency care. Through interviews with leaders of some of Canada’s innovative programs, the report shines a light on activities that are working to bring wait times under control and improve the public’s access to wait times information.

This report is a look at one of the key public concerns about health care, set in the context of the national commitment to achieve meaningful reductions in wait times in five priority areas – cancer, heart, diagnostic imaging, joint replacements and sight restoration – by March 31, 2007.

We found that:

• The First Ministers’ agreement in 2004 has clearly led to focused efforts to reduce wait times within—and, in some jurisdictions, beyond— the five priority areas. We profile a sample of these initiatives.
• As a result, wait times have declined, in some cases dramatically, for some health care services in some provinces. The report presents a look at wait times data available on provincial websites.
• But the information needed to paint a cross-Canada picture of wait times today compared to three years ago is not available, despite commitments that it would be. The Health Council continues to call for accelerated investments in the data systems necessary to make this happen.

Following the federal budget in March of this year, patient wait time guarantees are now part of the Canadian health care landscape. What do they mean? How have other countries approached the idea of care guarantees? Wading through Wait Times explores these and other questions.

News release | Backgrounder: Regional success stories in reducing wait times

Other Health Council of Canada publications on wait times and access to care

10 Steps to a Common Framework for Reporting on Wait Times (November 2005): This brief technical report makes clear the need for common terminology and measurements to evaluate the nature of wait times for health care in Canada.

A Background Note on Benchmarks for Wait Times (November 2005): To help Canadians understand the public debates and pronouncements about benchmarks, this report uses a question-and-answer format to define benchmarks and targets and provides a brief history on government commitments related to benchmarks for medically acceptable wait times and their progress to date.

Wait Times and Access (January 2005): This background paper to our first annual report to Canadians, Health Care Renewal in Canada: Accelerating Change, addresses why timely access is an issue, why waits occur, what has been done to improve timely access, and what we might do to overcome impediments and improve progress.