Pulling no punches, the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) has warned that the nation’s emergency departments (EDs) are at a crisis point: dwindling numbers of available beds, overworked staff, sicker patients showing up with co-morbidities (hypertension, diabetes and digestive complaints) who should have been treated earlier but, for lack of access, weren’t. * CIHI is a private organization funded by Health Canada and provincial health departments. In a June 2026 release, CIHI revealed that among all ED visits nationally, 37% were for patients aged 55 and older; 84% occurred in urban areas; and 7.7% (1.2 million) patients left the ED before being seen or assessed by a physician ‒ likely due to long, discouraging wait times and overcrowding. “These patients are an important indicator of overcrowding and ED inefficiency but were not examined and their status was unknown,” wrote the authors of the report. And, of the more than 14.8 million ED visits that were completed, nearly nine in 10 (88%, or 13.1 million encounters) resulted in the patient being discharged, while 12% (or 1.8 million visits) resulted in a hospital admission. Specifically, the survey showed that in 2024/25, two-thirds (66%) of 16.1 million ED visits were triaged as high acuity (resuscitation, emergent or urgent levels) indicating life-threatening conditions requiring rapid medical evaluation. During that time period, half of ED patients waited for two hours to be assessed by physicians; one in 10 waited for longer than five hours. It also noted that one in five Canadians have no regular health-care provider (normally a family physician), and that only 23% were able to get care in the evenings or on weekends ‒ one of the poorest response rates among comparably developed nations. In addition, one in 10 patients who required MRI services waited for longer than 200 days (40, if only for a CT scan) and, among those requiring community-based home-care services, one in 10 waited for longer than a month. The CIHI data also confirmed that in terms of practising-physician availability, Canada rates poorly in comparison to its peer nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, yielding only 2.4 practising physicians per 1,000 people (2024) and ranking 29th out of 31 nations in the poll. That’s far behind the 6.6 physicians per 1,000 for Greece, 4.5 for Denmark, 4.4 for Germany, 4 for Croatia and Australia, and 3.4 for the U.K. Yet, despite this low standing, Canada’s health-care spending surged near the top rank of those countries with universal health care and is expected to peak at 12.6% of GDP in 2026. That’s par with Germany, France, the U.K. and Switzerland, all of which have preferable access to most entry points in their health-care systems ‒ including acute-care bed availability. Where Have Canada’s Doctors Gone? The Need Only Grows. By Milan Korcok Health 36 | www.snowbirds.org
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