British Columbians waiting much longer for walk-in clinic doctor compared to rest of country

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    When it comes to wait times at walk-in medical clinics, British Columbians have it worse than anyone else across the country according to data from tracking site Medimaps. Liza Yuzda explains.

    The wait time to see a walk-in clinic doctor in B.C. is one of the worst in Canada, according to data collected from Medimap.

    Medimap, a B.C.-based online service that lets people know how long they have to wait, analyzed data from 2021 and found that, on average, people were waiting about an hour to see a doctor at a walk-in clinic.

    Blake Adam with Medimap points out, “what was interesting about that, for us, was that it actually increased from 2019.”

    “When we last looked at the data before the pandemic — it was up about 35 per cent across the province. Not what we expected to see. We had kind of anticipated with the pandemic that we were going to see a drop in wait times because people weren’t going into the clinics and a lot of visits were happening virtually, which can happen faster. So in every other province, other than B.C., we did see a drop in wait times. The average wait time fell by on average 20 per cent. But not the case in B.C.,” he explained.

    Provinces where Medimaps operates, like Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario, saw decreases during the pandemic.

    (Screenshot: medimap.ca)

    However, waits across B.C. vary, Adam says. For example, Victoria saw the worst delays in Canada at a staggering 161-minute average. Adam speculates Victoria saw these averages because of the difficulty in finding a family doctor.

    “With any of this, it comes down to supply and demand. It’s pretty well documented that it’s challenging to find a family doctor across the province. We’ve got 850,000 people who don’t have a family doctor. So those people inevitably end up relying on walking medical clinics for access to primary care. So I think there’s just there’s a real need in B.C. and it is different by community for sure. Like we’ve seen Victoria … is one of those cities where it’s even harder than anywhere else to find a family doctor.”

    Kelowna, White Rock, Vancouver, and North Vancouver also saw long delays with about hour to three hour waits.

    Chilliwack, Surrey, Delta, Coquitlam, and Abbotsford were areas with some of the lower waits – averaging about 15 to 20 minutes.

    “So pretty big discrepancies from city to city across the province,” Adam said.

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    Medimaps operates in Canada’s largest provinces except Quebec.

    So far, the province has opened 28 urgent primary care centers (UPCC).

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