On December 22, Prashant Sreekumar, a 44-year-old man of Indian origin, reported to the emergency room(ER) of the Gray Nuns Hospital in Edmonton, complaining of extreme chest ache. Regardless of repeated pleas from Prashant and his members of the family, he was reportedly made to attend for almost eight hours. Throughout this era, he remained in intense ache as his blood stress continued to shoot up, reaching ranges as excessive as 210. The one medical help supplied to him throughout this complete time was doses of Tylenol to handle the ache.
After eight hours, when Prashant was lastly taken in for emergency remedy, he collapsed and died inside seconds. Standing beside Prashant’s physique, his spouse was seen in a video saying that “the hospital killed him”. “Mainly, the hospital administration and the workers of Gray Nuns Group Hospital have killed my husband, by not offering him with well timed medical assist,” she is heard saying in a video that has gone viral.
Prashant’s dying factors to a broader disaster affecting Canada’s healthcare system. For years, Canadian sufferers and media experiences have raised considerations about steadily rising wait instances in hospital emergency rooms throughout the nation. Related experiences have been shared by Indian college students in Canada, a few of whom have reported ready so long as 16 hours for medical consideration.
Emergency drugs operates on the precept of the Golden Hour, which holds that sufferers dealing with extreme sickness or traumatic harm have the very best likelihood of survival in the event that they obtain medical care inside the first hour. Measured in opposition to this commonplace, Prashant’s eight-hour wait signifies a critical failure in emergency care supply and factors to deeper systemic shortcomings inside Canada’s healthcare system.
HOW DOES CANADA’S HEALTHCARE SYSTEM OPERATE?
Healthcare in Canada is guided by the ideas of the Canada Well being Act of 1984, which established a system often called Medicare.
Medicare is a publicly funded government-run organisation which offers all residents and everlasting residents of the nation with common healthcare freed from cost. Medicare offers 70% of all healthcare wants for Canadians, with the remaining 30% supplied by personal operators and contains procedures not coated by Medicare, together with dentistry, eye care, psychotherapy, gender remedy and many others. Non-public medical care is normally paid by means of public insurance coverage, with a report by The Washington Submit saying that at the very least 70% of Canadians have both public or personal medical insurance.
Supply of healthcare, nonetheless, is left to the varied provinces and territories of the nation. The federal authorities is chargeable for setting nationwide healthcare ideas, transferring cash to the varied provinces, regulating medicine and medical procedures, and protecting particular teams like Indigenous peoples on reserves, members of the army and federal inmates. Native governments, in the meantime, are chargeable for funding hospitals, deciding their staffing necessities, deciding which medical procedures will probably be coated by Medicare and funding public insurance coverage methods like OHIP in Ontario.
Based on the Canadian Institute for Well being Data, the nation spent near $308 billion in 2021, or 12.7% of Canada’s GDP for that yr. The Organisation for Financial Co-Operation and Improvement, in its 2025 Well being At a Look report, famous the nation carried out nicely throughout a wide range of metrics, together with life expectancy, preventable mortality charge, entry to healthcare, public healthcare spending, and many others. Throughout the board, most Canadians reported being kind of glad with the nation’s healthcare system with a survey by Ipsos discovering out about 56% of respondents glad with the extent of public healthcare they obtained.
Nonetheless, there do exist some evident gaps inside Canada’s healthcare system, with one among its most persistent challenges being the rising pressure on emergency care, pushed by workers shortages, an ageing inhabitants and rising affected person volumes.
WHAT ARE THE PROBLEMS WITH CANADA’S HEALTHCARE SYSTEM?
One of the vital salient issues inside Canada’s healthcare system is the shortage of main care docs inside the nation. Based on a examine carried out by the CMA in 2025, an estimated 5.9 million Canadians, or about 1 in 5 people lack entry to main care suppliers like clinics, household physicians and nurse practitioners. The identical examine additionally revealed that though 81% of the inhabitants had entry to main care suppliers, solely about 37.5% of people have been in a position to get an pressing appointment inside 24 hours.
Major care suppliers like clinics and household physicians type the entrance line of any nation’s healthcare system, serving to to look after minor illnesses and accidents. Improper entry to those methods forces sufferers to show to hospitals for even essentially the most minor causes, main to a different one among Canadian healthcare’s most urgent downside, overcrowded emergency rooms (ERs).
Based on a examine by the Canadian Institute for Well being Data, as much as 20% of emergency visits are for situations simply treatable inside main care methods, with the examine noting roughly 16 million visits. This elevated load on ERs can result in a number of detrimental results.
Based on INFOnews, Canadian ERs at the moment are working past capability as a norm, with ERs in Quebec province working at 120% capability, with some websites working at 200% capability. Overstretched ERs results in sufferers having to attend longer thah medically suggested for admittance and care.
OVER 8-HOUR WAIT TIME AT CANADA HOSPITALS FOR URGENT ADMISSION
Based on the Canadian Medical Affiliation, wait instances for non-urgent sufferers to get admitted have elevated to over 22 hours, whereas these for pressing sufferers have elevated to anyplace between 6.5 to eight.5 hours. Overstretched emergency rooms (ERs) additionally resulted in sufferers having to remain longer, with the Canadian Institute for Well being Data noting that sufferers admitted to a hospital from an ER are staying for much longer, with 9 in 10 accomplished visits exceeding 48.5 hours.
And it is not simply hospital admittance instances which can be struggling.
Based on a examine carried out by the Frazer Institute, it revealed that Canadians have to attend longer for medical procedures after being referred by a Normal Doctor. Based on the examine, the typical ready time for sufferers between being referred and the process elevated to 30 weeks in 2024, in comparison with the 9.3 weeks sufferers might anticipate in 1995. Important procedures like Orthopaedic Surgical procedure (57.5 weeks) and Neurosurgery (46.2 weeks) are essentially the most affected.
Compounding these issues is the truth that Canada suffers from a scarcity of educated docs and nursing workers.
Based on The Organisation for Financial Co-Operation and Improvement’s 2025 Well being At a Look report, the nation has 2.8 practising physicians per 1,000 inhabitants, which is decrease than the OECD common of three.8 of 1000. And a report by the Authorities of Canada titled, The State of the Well being Workforce in Canada printed in 2022 projected a scarcity of 78,000 docs by 2031 and 117,600 nurses by 2030.
HOW CANADIAN CITIZENS ARE SUFFERING FROM THE SHORTCOMINGS OF CANADA’S HEALTHCARE SYSTEM?
Following the dying of Prasanth, Canadian journalist Rajinder Saini, talking to India Right now TV, famous that the typical ready time in Canadian ERs was now as much as 8 to even 16 hours, with many sufferers having to return from hospitals after failing to get admitted, with many cases of individuals passing away with out attending to see a physician. He famous that regardless of Canada’s inhabitants having quickly elevated because of immigration, hospitals had failed so as to add sufficient beds to take care of the surge, resulting in crowded ERs.
One other India Right now Digital Report famous that lack of main healthcare and lengthy hospital wait instances have been one of many main issues dealing with worldwide college students in Canada, who shouldn’t have protection from the nation’s common healthcare protection system. Based on the Canada Medical Affiliation, those that will not be coated by Medicare, together with international college students, may need to pay as a lot as $260 CAD for a medical appointment and $1000 CAD for a hospital ER go to.
Related sentiments have been mirrored throughout the nation. Based on the Canadian newspaper Capital Every day, the variety of folks having to go away emergency rooms with out getting admitted has jumped to 86% within the final 7 years, with as much as 141,961 sufferers having to go away with out correct care between 2024 and 2025 in British Colombia alone.
A CBC report famous a determine of 500,000 throughout the nation, with round 5% to fifteen% of sufferers having to go away ERs with out correct care. Talking to the CBC, Fraser MacKay, an emergency doctor in New Brunswick and a board director of the Canadian Affiliation of Emergency Physicians (CAEP), famous it is a facet impact of lengthy wait instances in ERs.
In a single unlucky incident reported by the CBC, with many parallels to Prashant Sreekumar’s case, in 2024, 16-year-old Finlay van der Werken was taken to Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital with extreme belly ache. He was triaged as “emergent”, requiring a physician inside quarter-hour. As an alternative, he waited over eight hours as his situation worsened. By the point he was seen, Finlay had developed sepsis and went into cardiac arrest, later dying of organ failure. And identical to Prasanth’s spouse and father who accused the Gray Nuns hospital of negligence, Finlay’s dad and mom mentioned his dying was preventable and sued the hospital community.
Prashant Sreekumar’s dying is a heartbreaking reminder of the human value of pressure inside Canada’s healthcare system. Whereas Medicare guarantees common entry, households in overcrowded emergency rooms typically expertise worry, helplessness and loss as workers shortages and lengthy waits delay care. His and the expertise of many others earlier than him display how systemic gaps can flip that promise into tragedy.
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