Alberta not collecting data on health-care wait list deaths: official

Since 2018, SecondStreet.org says almost 75,000 Canadians have died while on wait lists for surgery and diagnostic treatments. It also found that Alberta did not track these statistics. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh (Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press)

Newly released data looking into the state of health care in the country suggests that thousands Canadians have died while on waiting lists for surgery and diagnostic services.

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The information, collected by SecondStreet.org through a variety of freedom of information requests across Canada, found 15,474 patients died in 2023-24 before receiving care.

The organization suggests that number could be even larger - somewhere around 28,000 - because several provinces did not provide enough data or simply don’t track the number of patients on waiting lists.

Since SecondStreet.org began recording this data in April 2018, it said 74,677 Canadians have died while on waiting lists.

“Canadians pay really high taxes and yet our health-care system is failing when compared to better-performing universal systems in Europe,” said Harrison Fleming, legislative and policy director at SecondStreet.org, in a news release.

“Thousands of Canadians across the country find themselves on waitlists - in some cases for several years - with too many tragically dying before ever getting treated, or even diagnosed.”

These patients are on waiting lists for cancer treatment and heart surgery, as well as cataract procedures and MRI scans, SecondStreet.org said.

It said Alberta, Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador and most of Manitoba did not provide any data, while Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia only provided partial data on patients who died while waiting for surgeries, not diagnostic scans.

“When a restaurant fails a health inspection, the government shares the news publicly and sometimes notices are posted in the establishment’s windows for everyone to see,” said SecondStreet.org president Colin Craig.

“But, when nearly 75,000 Canadians have died before getting the care they needed, governments don’t proactively disclose anything. Maybe it’s time for governments to hold themselves to the same standard they hold everyone else.”

‘Not part of a systematic process’

Alberta Health told CTV News that some data was collected in the past, it is no longer doing so.

“There has not been consistent analysis on this issue in the past five years. Earlier attempts at tracking these deaths were irregular and not part of a systematic process,” a spokesperson from Health Minister Adriana LaGrange’s office said in an email.

Officials said it stopped because it was difficult to determine if the death was attributed to the wait for a procedure or “other factors involved.”

“For instance, while a person may pass away waiting for a non-urgent surgery like cataract removal, it’s unlikely that the wait time directly caused the death,” the statement read.

“We will continue working to ensure the health-care system remains transparent and that Albertans have access to the information they need,” Alberta Health said.

SecondStreet.org is calling on governments to do more to notify the public about deaths of Canadians on waiting lists.