Canadians are waiting as long -- if not longer -- than previous years for medical care, the Wait Time Alliance concludes in its latest report card.

The report finds that some provinces seem to be making progress in addressing wait times for critical procedures, such as cancer and cardiac care, joint replacement, sight restoration and diagnostic imaging.

But once again, as in years past, the group notes that there can be significant variations in wait times between provinces.

Although an increasing number of critical surgeries are being performed, wait times are not improving, the Wait Time Alliance says.

“It would appear that demand is rising at a rate that is outpacing the ability of health systems to keep up,” the group says in its report.

Dr. Chris Simpson, chair of the WTA, says the result is that progress in cutting wait times has stalled.

"Not only has there been no progress over the last year in wait times in any of the five priority areas, in many instances Canadians are waiting longer now than they were two years ago," he said in a statement.

This year's report also reaffirms a similar finding made in 2011 that a significant number of hospital beds across the country are being “blocked” by patients who could be receiving care elsewhere, such as rehabilitative care, in a long-term care home or at home with homecare.

The high number of patients waiting to be placed into these alternate care settings threatens “to overwhelm the health care system,” the Wait Time Alliance says, because they block access for emergency department patients and patients scheduled for elective surgery.

There has been one positive development in recent years, the Wait Time Alliance says: all provinces now have websites reporting wait times and these websites are continuing to improve, especially in Saskatchewan, Quebec and Nova Scotia. But they say the provinces still report on too-limited number of procedures.

The Wait Time Alliance has been tracking provincial performance on wait times since 2007 through annual report cards.

It assesses only the length of time between the decision by a patient and their specialist to treat and the start of that treatment. It doesn’t include any wait periods to see a family doctor or to see the consulting specialist.

Taken together, though, these wait periods “can add up to very long waits for Canadian patients,” the group says.