Median wait · 2035
49.7 wks
Istari · the wait, and the way out
You wait 28 weeks
for care.
23,000 don’t
make it.
That’s the median Canadian, family-doctor referral to treatment — and the people who died on a waiting list in a single year.1,3
And on the current path,
it hits ~50 weeks by 2035.
The queue compounds on itself — longer waits make sicker patients, who need more care. Doing nothing isn’t holding steady. It’s accelerating.
Here’s the good news:
we don’t have to reinvent anything.
Other public systems — and one Canadian province — already cut their waits. AI might help, but we don’t even need it. The fixes exist and they work. It’s as simple as pulling more levers — and stacking them.
No team jersey — we model what shortens the queue and show every trade-off. Sources & method →
Pull the levers
You’re the system architect now.
Flip a fix and the curve moves in real time. The red line is “do nothing.” Stack fixes to bend it down by 2035 — then add a risk and watch how fast it fights back.
Projected median wait · 2025–2035do nothingyour plan
Lives’ worth of risk reduced*
—
Fixes engaged
0 / 8
Getting worse
This path deepens the backlog to ~50 weeks by 2035. The risk factors are outpacing the reforms — the queue compounds faster than you can clear it.
Fixes that help
Forces that make it worse
*An illustrative figure: it scales the reported ~23,746 deaths-on-a-list/yr to your modelled wait reduction. Read it as “risk taken off the table,” not a literal count — directional, not a forecast.
Your blueprint
What you just built.
F
Pull some levers above to start designing a better future.
49.7w
Median wait, 2035
—
lives’ worth of risk reduced*
0 / 8
Fixes stacked
Want the full picture?
The evidence, the human stakes, and every honest trade-off.
You’ve run the model. The Deep Dive has everything underneath it — sourced, explained, and argued through.
Sources & verification
- verifiedMedian total wait 28.6 weeks (2025). Moir & Esmail, Waiting Your Turn 2025, Fraser Institute.
- verifiedAt least 23,746 Canadians died on a waiting list in the year to Mar 2025. SecondStreet.org via CTV News.
- illustrativeEffect sizes, drift rate, and lives estimate are Istari model assumptions — not measured coefficients. Full methodology on the Deep Dive page.