The Topline
- 17 per cent of Canadians don’t have a regular healthcare provider, and as a result, about 15 per cent of emergency rooms visits are for issues that could be treated in a clinic
- Wait times for care are increasing across Canada – MRI wait times, for example, rose by an average of 15 days between 2019 and 2024
- Access to care varies depending on location, leading to unequal access across the country
Recruit, recruit, recruit
Long waits, packed emergency rooms, and not enough healthcare professionals – access to vital healthcare is getting more difficult across the country.
A 2023 survey showed that Canada has the highest number of people without a regular care provider compared to 10 other wealthy countries. That means millions of Canadians don’t have a family doctor or nurse practitioner to turn to when they’re sick.
So where do they go? Often, it’s the emergency room. And that’s part of why the average wait time to see a doctor in a Canadian emergency department is now 5.5 hours.
It’s not just emergency care. Nearly one-in-five Canadians wait six months or more to see a medical specialist. That’s a long time when you’re dealing with pain, illness, or uncertainty.
Health Workforce Canada, a national organization focused on solving our health workforce challenge, reports that nursing vacancies have grown by over 33,000 in the past eight years. Vacancies for pharmacists, occupational therapists, and physiotherapists have also jumped by nearly 4,000. Clearly, we don’t have enough people to support our healthcare system.
And the problem isn’t spread evenly. Northern and rural communities have some of the lowest numbers of healthcare workers per person. That means people in those areas often face even longer waits and fewer options.
A quick and easy answer to this is to hire more people. By getting more nurses and allied health professionals into these vacancies, and more family practitioners working, our system would immediately function better and allow more people to receive care.
Governments are trying to help. The federal government has invested millions into organizations like Health Workforce Canada, and into programs that support recruitment and licensing for doctors. In British Columbia, the province is spending even more to attract healthcare workers from the U.S. and make it easier for them to work here.
But more needs to be done. Right now, registered nurses can’t easily move between provinces, even when there’s a clear need. And for internationally trained healthcare workers, the process to get licensed in Canada is so difficult that many end up working in other fields.
The message is clear: Canada needs to recruit more healthcare workers – and fast.
We need more than recruitment
We hear a lot about the need to recruit more healthcare workers in Canada, especially from our governments, and yes, it’s important. But hiring more people won’t fix everything. In fact, it’s not even the biggest piece of the puzzle.
Here’s something surprising: Canada has more healthcare workers per person now than we did 10 years ago. Between 2013 and 2023, the number of people per physician dropped from 892 to 839. The number of people per pharmacist also went down. So if we have more workers per capita, why are wait times still so long and why is our healthcare system still failing so many?
One major reason is burnout. Healthcare workers around the world are exhausted, and Canada is no exception. Recently, a mass resignation of physicians occurred in a B.C. hospital , citing “extreme physician burnout" as a key reason. Some reports show that 78 per cent of our healthcare workforce is burnt out. That means even if we hire more people, they might not stay unless we fix the root causes.
Healthcare is also getting more complex. Thanks to medical advances, people are living longer and surviving serious illnesses. That’s great news, but it also means they need more care. For example, the number of people with end-stage kidney disease has increased by 49 per cent in the last 20 years, and transplant surgeries have increased by 31 per cent in just eight years. These treatments take hundreds if not thousands of healthcare professional hours to support just one patient.
Another issue is how we organize care. Most family doctors and nurse practitioners run their own clinics, which means they’re also business owners. They have to manage supplies, technology, paperwork, and billing –on top of seeing patients. It’s a huge burden, and many are choosing to work in hospitals instead, where the administrative burden is lower and other people do these tasks for them.
Our system also focuses mostly on acute care, helping people who are already sick, rather than preventing illness in the first place. That means people often get worse while waiting, which leads to more complex treatments and more strain on the system.
To really fix things, we need to do things differently. This can include using technology to connect with patients more often and streamline burdensome administrative processes. We also need to challenge the status quo of how we provide care and concentrate more on wellness and preventing illness.
Recruitment matters, but it’s not enough on its own. If we don’t change how the system works, even new workers will burn out and leave. It’s time to rethink the whole approach.
