Over 23,500 patients died on medical waitlists last year: Study
Over 23,500 patients died in Canada while waiting for surgeries or diagnostic scans, according to a new study by Secondstreet.org.
Over 23,500 patients died in Canada while waiting for surgeries or diagnostic scans, according to a new study by Secondstreet.org. The free-market think tank says the death toll is underreported due to several provinces’ failure to track the data, despite the organization’s request for the information.
SecondStreet.org released its fifth annual “Died on a Waiting List” report on Wednesday, showing that the number of Canadians dying while waiting for both critical and non-essential healthcare has increased, saying the “overall situation has in fact deteriorated” from last year.
The think tank began submitting Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to gather government data on the number of Canadians dying while waiting for surgeries and diagnostic scans since 2018. SecondStreet.org sent out requests to “over 40 government health departments, health authorities and regions” in April 2025, and discovered that at least 23,746 patients died while waiting for care in the fiscal year 2024-25.
Last year’s waitlist deaths represent a 31.74 per cent increase from the year prior’s data. However, Secondstreet notes that such an increase could be expected as more government agencies began providing data to the group’s annual study.
Colin Craig, the president of the think tank and author of the report, noted that when comparing just the data from healthcare bodies that provided data to the group in the report from the fiscal year 2023-24, there was still a three per cent increase in waitlist deaths.
Since April 2018, when the data was first requested, SecondStreet has confirmed more than 100,876 Canadians have died while waiting to access healthcare in Canada. The group notes that these deaths are not due to a lack of funding, as Canada has consistently been one of the highest spenders on healthcare among other developed universal healthcare systems globally.
The report notes that Canada spent $244 billion on healthcare in 2024-25, marking an all-time high. Spending on healthcare is on track to increase next year.
The Fraser Institute found that wait times for elective or scheduled treatments have been growing for decades. One study found that the average wait times to see a specialist or receive treatment went from 9.3 weeks in 1993 to 30 weeks as of 2024.
Based on “partial data” obtained by the FOI requests, SecondStreet estimated that there were nearly six million Canadians on medical waitlists in 2025.
Despite ranking third-highest in spending as a share of GDP, adjusted for age, among 29 other developed countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 2023, Canada has repeatedly ranked near the bottom for its healthcare performance, according to the Fraser Institute. In a 2025 report, Canada ranked 26th in physicians per 1,000 people, 25th in hospital beds and 29th in wait times for access to care. Canada also ranked the lowest for timely access to elective surgeries and specialist appointments.
SecondStreet recommended five ways that Canadian healthcare systems can address the issue, including tracking and disclosing the relevant data and funding healthcare providers based on the services they provide, or “activity-based funding,” rather than annual cheques to cover entire budgets.
The think tank also recommended that Canada learn from the other universal healthcare systems, which rank higher in providing healthcare services, such as a hybrid partnership with the private sector. This week, the Alberta government unveiled a plan to allow private healthcare providers to work within the provincial system, aiming to reduce wait times.
SecondStreet said allowing a private clinic to bill the government for the healthcare visit would mean patients wouldn’t be stuck with the costs while still taking the load off of the public health system.
It also recommended that governments expand healthcare options to allow non-governmental clinics to provide the same services as clinics that patients are leaving Canada to access.
The think tank also argued that the federal government adopt a “EU Cross Border Directive” style approach, which would allow patients in one province to travel to another to access healthcare while still being reimbursed by their home province’s government. The province would cover up to the same amount that their government would have spent to provide the surgery.
“This policy could immediately help provincial governments in Canada reduce waiting list backlogs in Canada at the same cost per procedure to the public purse, as some patients would decide to travel outside the province for health care instead of depending on local health care,” Craig wrote.
The group noted that patients who use the service would immediately be removed from the waitlists in their own province, meaning others waiting for care would “move up” on the wait list “each time someone ahead of them chose to travel for health care.”