Thousands of Canadians are on doctor wait-lists. Are they effective?

In Ontario, the average wait time for the thousands of prospective patients on the province's list looking to be connected to a family doctor is, according to the government, around 90 days.

But that, of course, is the average. And depending where one may reside in the province, the wait time can be significantly longer.

«In some places, we have patients who've been on the list for years,» says Dr. Mike Green, president of the College of Family Physicians of Canada and a Kingston, Ont.-based doctor.

According to a recent survey, around six million Canadians are without a family doctor. But some provinces, to help facilitate a match, have created centralized waiting lists where people can register and eventually be matched with physicians who are taking new patients.

In April, for example, the B.C government announced it was launching a new online system where people looking for doctors could register. (Last year, the province said there were 895,000 people in B.C. without a family doctor.)

Yet while some health-care observers and experts believe the idea of such lists is a good one, in some provinces, challenges remain.

15,000 on list for 3 years

In March, Nova Scotia Health reported more than 150,000 people were still waiting on its list as of Feb. 1 to be matched with a doctor, and that 10 per cent, or about 15,000 people, had been on the list for more than three years.

In Ontario in 2022, according to the government, over 44,000 people were connected to a primary care provider through its system, Health Care Connect (HCC). However, there are currently nearly 200,000 patients registered with HCC across the province, according to Ontario's Ministry of Health.

Green, who is part of a study looking into the efficiency of these