Across Canada, over 1.2 million patients left emergency rooms untreated last year.

The number of patients leaving Ontario’s emergency rooms without being treated is rising, reveals a report published this morning by the MEI.

“These patients are not leaving because they feel better, but because the system is failing them,” says Renaud Brossard, vice president of Communications at the MEI. “Thousands of Ontarians are being denied access to care each year.”

In 2024, Ontario recorded nearly 6.0 million emergency room visits. Of these, 292,695 ended with a patient leaving before receiving treatment, representing 4.9 per cent of all visits.

This marks a worsening trend, with the ratio of patients leaving surging by 31.0 per cent since 2019.

Patients in Ontario walk away from emergency rooms without receiving care at a rate that is lower than the national average of 7.8 per cent.

Across Canada, 16.3 million emergency room visits were made last year, and 1,267,736 patients were left untreated—around one in every thirteen visits. This data doesn’t include patients living in Saskatchewan, or those covered by New Brunswick’s Vitalité Santé health network, those health authorities having both failed to provide the requested 2024 data in time for publication.

The deterioration is observed nationwide, as rates of premature departures have risen significantly since 2019. Last year, the number of Canadian patients leaving without treatment increased by 35.6 per cent.

In Ontario, nearly half of those who leave without treatment are classified as P3, which are cases that are not life-threatening but still require urgent medical attention.

“This is particularly troubling as it means patients are sent back to the waiting room despite a very real risk of deterioration,” says Mr. Brossard.

The MEI researcher emphasized that patients forced to delay or forgo care often end up suffering from worsening conditions, which lead to more complex cases.

In a U.S. study conducted between 2019 and 2020, researchers found that 55 per cent of patients who left an emergency room before being treated ended up consulting a healthcare professional within three weeks of their initial visit.

The MEI recommends increasing access to upstream care, which includes:

• Increasing the use of specialized nurse practitioner clinics;
• Granting the broadest scope of practice to pharmacists; and
• Allowing for the creation of non-governmental Immediate Care Medical Centres, based on the French model, to treat non-life-threatening emergencies.

“Solving the crisis in primary care is essential if we want to keep patients from continuing to fall through the cracks,” says Mr. Brossard. “Policymakers must find the political courage to open up healthcare delivery to independent and alternative providers, or else this crisis is bound to get worse.”

The MEI Economic Note is available here: https://www.iedm.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/economic-note-102025.pdf

The MEI is an independent public policy think tank with offices in Montreal, Ottawa, and Calgary. Through its publications, media appearances, and advisory services to policymakers, the MEI stimulates public policy debate and reforms based on sound economics and entrepreneurship.