New data shows how long Ontarians are waiting to see a medical specialist

A chart and stethoscope are seen in this file photo.

New data from Statistics Canada shows that a little over a third of Ontario residents who sought an assessment from a medical specialist last year were unhappy with the amount of time it took to get an initial appointment.

According to the report, about 10.8 million Canadians ages 18 and older reported consulting with a medical specialist for an initial consultation in the year prior to the survey.

About 35 per cent of those surveyed said they waited less than a month for an appointment, while 40 per cent waited between one and less than three months. About 36 per cent waited three months or more.

According to the data, a higher proportion of Quebec residents, about 42 per cent, saw a specialist in less than a month, compared to Ontario, where about 33 per cent saw a specialist in under 30 days.

In terms of overall satisfaction with wait times, just under half of Canadians said they were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the wait time they experienced, while about 31 per cent said they were “dissatisfied” or “very dissatisfied.”

Ontario was slightly worse than the national average, with about 45.6 per cent saying they were satisfied with the wait and 34.2 per cent indicating that they were not.

“Satisfaction level with the wait time was directly linked with the amount of time one waited to see a specialist,” an analysis accompanying the survey read.

Among those who saw a specialist within a month, 83 per cent said they were satisfied with the wait time. This dropped to 50 per cent for patients who waited between one and three months, and 17 per cent for those who waited more than three months.

When it comes to the impact of wait times, survey results indicated that about 64 percent of Canadians reported that their lives were impacted by the wait time.

Two-thirds experienced “worry, anxiety, and stress,” while about one third said they experienced pain or difficulties with activities of daily living. About one in five said their health condition deteriorated in that time.

“A lower proportion of Canadians in New Brunswick (55 per cent) said their lives were affected by the wait time compared to Ontario, where 64 (per cent) reported that their lives were affected,” the analysis continued.

“Prolonged wait times to access specialist care can adversely affect patient health outcomes by delaying timely diagnosis and necessary interventions.”

When asked about the data released by Statistics Canada, Ema Popovic, a spokesperson for the Minister of Health, pointed to another report by the Canadian Institute of Health Information identifying Ontario as the province with the “shortest wait times for critical surgeries and procedures—such as MRI scans or hip and knee surgery.”

“Through our government’s record investments in our health care system, we are continuing to build on this progress by enhancing digital tools and adding hundreds of thousands more diagnostic imaging and surgical procedures to connect people to the care they need, when they need it,” she said in a written statement emailed to CP24.

Dr. Zainab Abdurrahman, the president of the Ontario Medical Association (OMA), said the new data released by Statistic Canada this week highlights the need for a centralized referral database in the province that would streamline the process for referring physicians.

The system, she said, would allow physicians to filter by unique specialization as well as the distance the patient is willing to travel.

“(It would) be able to include all the information so that it can be triaged appropriately… because obviously there are some conditions that do need to be seen faster.”

She noted that referring physicians wouldn’t have to spend so much time searching for the right specialist to refer to.

“You might not know who to refer to, and your physician is spending forever on a WhatsApp group asking people online, trying to find who does this,” Abdurrahman said.

“We’re trying to cut that part out, because triaging is happening, but you need to get the right people, to the right place, to triage.”

She said a considerable amount of funding is required to create this type of centralized system.

“We need the government to also participate in terms of helping us with funding, creation, but co-creating when it comes to how to make this functional and to make it worthwhile because we need to make sure that it makes sense for physicians to use a system like this,” Abdurrahman said.

“We don’t want to just create something that then isn’t helpful… that’s the last thing we want to do.”