CANADA—A November 23 report from the right-leaning think tank the Fraser Institute ‘Waiting Your Turn: Wait Times for Health Care in Canada, 2016 Report’ points out that wait times for “medically necessary” surgery and specialist appointments have increased again this past year.

“This edition of Waiting Your Turn indicates that, overall, waiting times for medically necessary treatment have increased since last year,” noted the report. “Specialist physicians surveyed report a median waiting time of 20 weeks between referral from a general practitioner and receipt of treatment—longer than the wait of 18.3 weeks reported in 2015. This year’s wait time, the longest ever recorded in this survey’s history, is 115 percent longer than in 1993, when it was just 9.3 weeks.”

The report notes that there is a lot of variance between provinces from coast to coast, and Ontario reports the shortest total wait (15.6 weeks), while New Brunswick reports the longest (38.8 weeks).

(This is) “a timely and important topic,” said Dr. Stephen Cooper, of the Northeastern Manitoulin Family Health Team and a member of the Ontario Medical Association board. “To tell the truth I am not sure myself (on how Island wait times compare to the provincial or national average), it depends on the specialist and time of year.”

Although Dr. Cooper indicated he would look into the statistics on local referrals, that information was not available by press time Monday.

Manitoulin Health Centre CEO Derek Graham was also uncertain as to how referrals at the hospital stack up against the provincial and national numbers, he noted that hospital referrals, by nature of those referrals coming from an emergency room, tend to be fairly short in turn around times. “When someone is being referred by us, it is usually because the issue is of some immediate concern.”

That priority concern comes into play from the family doctor as well.

“The specialists triage their referrals according to concern, ensuring they see the more urgent ones earlier,” noted Dr. Cooper. “Some patients and specialists prefer virtual consultation, which greatly speeds up the referral time. But if they are surgeons they are also hampered by their surgical wait times.”

One of the few medical services benefits of living in a rural region seems to be found in emergency room turnarounds however, as the Manitoulin Health Centre numbers beat the provincial average by a significant amount.

“We try to do a great job,” noted Mr. Graham, but he went on to note that most rural hospitals tend to report better emergency room turnarounds than those in larger, and much busier, urban centres.

Mr. Graham noted another thing that impacts specialist visits by rural patients, the simple geography and time it takes to get to the specialist can discourage people from following through on referrals—as in the case of PET scanners. The news that Sudbury will be getting a scanner could have a great impact.

“When you have close access to the technology, more people will choose to have the scans,” he projected.

Nine out of 10 patients waited no more than three hours to be seen by an emergency room doctor in 2014-2015, according to ‘Health Quality Ontario report, Under Pressure: Emergency department performance in Ontario.’ That equates to a 16.2 percent decrease from 2008-2009, when the maximum wait was 3.6 hours.

The same report notes that Ontarians living in urban areas, that would be about 86 percent of the population, also face longer emergency department waits and stays than people in rural areas, the report also suggests this is due to higher volume of patients. The report notes that, on average, urban patients waited 3.1 hours to see an emergency department doctor in 2014-2015. That compared to 2.6 hours for rural patients and the maximum visit time for urban patients admitted to hospital was reported to be up to six hours longer.