Patients needing neurosurgery faced a typical wait of more than a year.
waiting for medical care
In 2021, the median wait in Alberta between seeing a general practitioner and receiving treatment was 32.1 weeks.
The vast majority of universal health-care systems worldwide employ some form of cost-sharing.
The inability to provide timely access to care precedes the pandemic.
The province's median wait time was about three months longer than the Canadian average.
Canada only had 2.0 acute care beds per 1,000 population, ranking 25th out of the 26 countries.
For elective surgery, 99 per cent of Germans reported waiting less than four months compared to 62 per cent of Canadians.
Canada had 2.8 physicians per 1,000 population, ranking 26th out of 28 countries.
The elective surgery queue cost 1.2 million Canadians a total of $2.8 billion in lost wages and productivity.