Patients in B.C. wait the longest in Canada to see a doctor at a walk-in clinic — 25 minutes longer than the national average of more than an hour, according to a company that tracks wait times.
Medimap, which posts real-time wait times for hundreds of walk-in clinics across Canada, said the average wait time in Victoria was 107 minutes, or one hour and 47 minutes.
It’s the third year that B.C. has led the country in wait times, according to the report released Wednesday.
North Vancouver recorded the longest average wait-times in B.C. as well as Canada, with people waiting on average 187 minutes, or three hours and seven minutes, to see a doctor at a walk-in clinic.
In B.C., Chilliwack had the shortest wait time, at 44 minutes.
In Kelowna, it was 104 minutes, or one hour and 44 minutes. In Vancouver, people waited on average just over an hour, at 62 minutes at walk-in clinics.
Health Minister Adrian Dix did not directly address the results of the Medimap report in a scrum at the legislature on Wednesday, other than to note it in part promotes the company.
Instead, Dix noted that there are now 30 Urgent and Primary Care Centres in the province, pharmacists can now prescribe for some minor ailments, and a stabilization plan was implemented to help walk-in clinics.
“All of the other jurisdictions are looking to British Columbia and following our model of addressing primary care.”
Dix announced last week that in the first year of a new payment deal for family doctors, 708 more doctors are working in family practice. Of those, 179 — or 25 per cent — are practising on Vancouver Island.
An additional 60 nurse practitioners are working in B.C. communities.
