Wait Times

Wait Times

Wait times are the delays patients experience in accessing care, from emergency department waits to delays for diagnostic imaging, specialist consultation, and surgery. They are both a systemic health-policy issue and a recurring background condition in medical malpractice litigation, where a delay in care is alleged to have allowed a time-sensitive condition to worsen.

The legal difficulty is that systemic wait times and individual standard of care do not map neatly onto one another. A practitioner is generally judged against what a reasonable practitioner could have done in the real conditions they faced, while the systemic causes of delay, such as overcrowding and hallway medicine, raise policy questions the courts continue to work out. Where delay is alleged to have caused harm, the causation analysis asks what difference timelier care would have made to the outcome.

Posts tagged Wait Times analyze Ontario decisions and policy issues in which delays in access to care intersected with patient safety and medical malpractice.

Navy title card reading "Dementia in the Hallway: Hallway care and the cognitively impaired patient in Ontario" from paulcahill.ca.

Five Days in a Hallway: Dementia, Delirium, and Hospital Liability in Ontario

A Saskatoon family went public this week after an 88-year-old man with early Alzheimer’s spent nearly five days on a bed in an emergency department hallway. The story is from Saskatchewan, but the conditions are familiar in Ontario, and the risks are sharpest for the patient who cannot orient himself, use a call bell, or tell anyone something has changed. Where the line falls between a strained system and an actionable failure is narrower than the headlines suggest.

August 7, 2026

Waiting 48 Hours in the Emergency Room: When Does a Delay Become Negligence?

A new report finds one in 10 admitted patients now spend more than 48 hours waiting in the emergency department, and roughly 16,000 died while waiting for care last year. But a broken system is not the same as a winnable malpractice claim. Here is where an ER delay can cross into negligence in Ontario, and where it cannot.

June 25, 2026

Case comment on Lorencz v Talukdar, 2024 SKCA 105 (Saskatchewan Court of Appeal), affirming dismissal of failure-to-refer claim. On breach of standard of care, the wait time evidence framework, and the limits of causation in failure-to-refer cases. By Paul Cahill, LSO Certified Specialist in Civil Litigation.

Lorencz v Talukdar: Failure to Refer, Wait Times, and Causation

The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal affirms dismissal of a failure-to-refer claim. Breach of standard of care, but causation defeated by referral wait times.

November 27, 2024

Leaving the ER early in Ontario: what it means for a malpractice claim. Patient guide by Paul Cahill, LSO Certified Specialist in Civil Litigation.

Leaving the ER Before Being Seen: The Legal Implications in Ontario

Hundreds of thousands of Canadians leave the ER without being seen each year. Here’s how Ontario law treats wait times, harm, and contributory negligence.

November 1, 2023

Five Days in a Hallway: Dementia, Delirium, and Hospital Liability in Ontario

Waiting 48 Hours in the Emergency Room: When Does a Delay Become Negligence?

Lorencz v Talukdar: Failure to Refer, Wait Times, and Causation

Leaving the ER Before Being Seen: The Legal Implications in Ontario

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Talk to Paul directly.