Fraser Institute, Canada, reports decline in number of medical tourists

Although waiting times and other problems of the Canadian health system became worse in 2013, the number of outbound medical tourists has probably seen a slight decline. The numbers are calculated in such a way that they are rather conservative, and actual numbers going to the US or elsewhere could be higher.

Although waiting times and other problems of the Canadian health system became worse in 2013, the number of outbound medical tourists has probably seen a slight decline. The numbers are calculated in such a way that they are rather conservative, and actual numbers going to the US or elsewhere could be higher.

The Fraser Institute’s annual waiting list survey asks doctors in 12 major medical specialties what percentage of their patients received non-emergency medical treatment outside Canada in the past year. In 2013, averaged across all medical specialties, almost 1% of patients in Canada were estimated to have done so, the same as in 2012.

Putting these numbers together with data on the number of procedures performed in Canada from the Canadian Institute for Health Information reveals that a conservatively estimated 41,838 Canadians received treatment outside the country in 2013.This is a slight decrease from the 2012 estimate of 42,173. At the same time, the wait time from specialist consultation to treatment in Canada increased from 9.3 weeks in 2012 to 9.6 weeks in 2013.

Faced with waiting for treatment for months, many Canadians choose to be medical tourists. Canada’s monopolistic health-care system means that getting private treatment in Canada is not easy, but the rules do vary by province.

Among the provinces, the estimated number of patients going outside Canada –

Province		2013	2012
Alberta		5,527	6,661
British Columbia		8146	8,132
Manitoba		1636	1,435
New Brunswick		372	997
Newfoundland		486	649
Nova Scotia		927	858
Ontario		19,118	15,725
Prince Edward Island		8	28
Quebec		4,904	6,308
Saskatchewan		714	1,380

For the 12 medical specialties, the largest numbers of patients receiving care outside Canada were urology (6,635), general surgery (5,537), and ophthalmology (3,083). Smallest numbers were cardiovascular surgeries (114), radiation treatment for cancer (127), and chemotherapy for cancer (249)

Even allowing that these are estimates, the number of Canadians with and health care demands that could not be met in Canada is large. How many of these would stay in Canada and in their home province if there was a free private healthcare market and plenty of private options, is not known. And how many more would have liked to join them, but could not afford the travel and private care?

Some Canadians were sent abroad by the public health care system because of a lack of available resources or that some procedures or equipment are not provided in their home province. Others may have concerns about local quality, seeking out more advanced health care facilities, higher tech medicine, or better outcomes. Others may have gone overseas as their condition was getting worse, and they either could not wait, or worried that local care was not as good as top US standards. Some may have gone abroad to avoid delay and to make a quicker return to work.

That a considerable number of Canadians travelled and paid to escape the failings of the Canadian health care system is true, but the reasons are far more complicated than the usual answer of long waiting times.