Quebec: ER wait times up by 41 minutes since 2018, reveals the MEI

• The median length of an emergency room stay in the province of Quebec last year was 5 hours and 12 minutes.

Montreal, August 20, 2026 – Since 2018, the median wait time in Quebec emergency rooms has increased by 41 minutes, hitting 5 hours and 12 minutes last year, according to new data shared by the MEI this morning.

“Despite the rapid increase in healthcare spending, Quebecers continue to wait longer and longer when they go to an ER,” says Renaud Brossard, vice president of communications at the MEI. “This shows that the problem is not about funding, but about the way the system is organized.”

The median length of stay in an emergency room, from arrival to discharge (or admission to another department), corresponds to the midpoint of all patients’ lengths of stay. This means that half of stays were longer and half were shorter.

In 2018-2019, the typical wait time in a Quebec emergency room was 4 hours and 31 minutes. Last year, the median stay in a Quebec ER reached 5 hours and 12 minutes, according to data shared by the MEI. This represents an increase of 41 minutes.

Over the same period, health spending grew by $24.2 billion to reach $66.0 billion this year, an increase of 57.9 per cent.

The regions with the longest median emergency room stays were Laval (7 hours and 49 minutes), the Laurentians (6 hours and 51 minutes), and the Montérégie (6 hours and 32 minutes).

Conversely, the Gaspé region had the shortest median stay, at 3 hours and 22 minutes.

The emergency room at Montreal’s Albert-Prévost pavilion—specializing in mental health—earned the dubious distinction of having the longest wait in Quebec, with a median length of stay of 14 hours and 23 minutes last year. Placing second and third respectively were the Royal Victoria hospital (9 hours and 45 minutes) and the Hull hospital (9 hours and 12 minutes).

“Spending long hours in emergency rooms may have become the norm in Quebec, but looking abroad, we can see that we need not be resigned to this fate,” says Mr. Brossard. “To truly reduce these wait times, we need to learn from the best practices observed elsewhere in the world, particularly the mixed systems found in Europe.”

There are solutions that could improve and accelerate access to care for patients. In France, Immediate Medical Care Centres operate as minor emergency departments accessible to everyone, but run independently of hospitals.

Mixed practice, recently authorized in Alberta, allows doctors to work in both public and private healthcare facilities. One study showed that in Denmark, doctors in mixed practice provide an average of 5.2 additional hours of care per week, without reducing their commitments to the public system. This enables them to see more patients overall.

The introduction of these measures would help ease the pressure on hospitals by taking on lower-priority cases, thereby enabling public hospitals to focus on more urgent and complex cases.

An Ipsos poll commissioned by the MEI in April shows that two in three Quebecers would like to have better access to private care in the province.

The data on ER wait times in Quebec are available here.

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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.

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