The number of people entering a B.C. emergency room and leaving without being seen by a doctor rose 86 per cent from 2018 to 2025, according to documents obtained by a freedom of information request filed by the B.C. Conservatives.
"And the numbers don't seem to be plateauing at all," said Brennan Day, the Conservatives' critic for Rural Health and Seniors' Health.
In the 2018/19 fiscal year, 76,157 patients left without being seen. By 2024/25, that number had risen to 141,962. During that timeframe, the total number of patients seen in emergency rooms did rise, but by only about 13 per cent, increasing to 2,595,219 in 2024/25.
The worst performers were Island Health, where the number of patients leaving without care more than doubled, and Fraser Health, where the number nearly doubled.
Waits of more than eight hours are not unheard of in B.C., and the median time spent in the province's ERs last year was four hours and 13 minutes, according to a recent study by MEI, a think tank.
Day pointed out that while some people may leave because their sickness has subsided, that does not mean they don't need treatment.
"Everybody's had a random pain that, if you wait eight hours, it goes away," Day said. "It's not to say that the underlying cause of that pain is not serious. So, it's pushing people away from the health care system."
Health Ministry says people will not be turned away
The Ministry of Health blamed an increasing number of people seeking care and an uptick in sicker patients. A statement from the ministry also said that people who are the least sick are the most likely to leave, and nobody will be turned away if they want care.
"When patients first arrive at the ED [emergency department], they are triaged and seen based on acuity," an emailed statement from the ministry said. "The sickest patients are always seen first. Patients are never turned away from the ED."
The statement added that certain patients, such as those experiencing chest pains, are encouraged not to leave before being seen.
The ministry is working to hire more doctors and nurses 鈥� including a highly publicized campaign to attract workers from the U.S. 鈥� and increased the number of acute care beds by 7.9 per cent in 2023. Some health authorities have also made average wait times available online this year to "help patients and their families make informed decisions about accessing care."
Doctors of BC, the advocacy organization representing the province's physicians, provided a statement to Black Press Media saying that it has been calling for an emergency department stabilization plan for some time to address broader dysfunction within hospitals.
"Emergency department overcrowding and long wait times can be symptoms of problems in other areas of the hospital, and solutions often require that these issues be addressed as well," the statement said.
The organization contends that while the province's recent efforts to recruit U.S. doctors and fund a new medical school at Simon Fraser University are helpful, more needs to be done.
Day wants the province to pressure the federal government to speed up visa processing for international doctors. He also wants the government to do a better job of listening to its front-line workers, calling the current system in the health authorities a "bureaucratic quagmire."
"The bureaucrats are too self-absorbed in protecting their own positions to listen to the front-line doctors and nurses," he said.