The Fraser Institute says a new study shows that health care wait times in the Atlantic provinces are the longest in the country, but available data shows that wait times in Newfoundland and Labrador are the second shortest in the country.

The Fraser Institute warns that although Newfoundland and Labrador’s results look positive, they should be interpreted with caution this year due to a lack of data for certain specialties.

Wait times for medically necessary elective treatments in this province this year came in at 21.1 weeks, the second-shortest wait times in the country behind Ontario at 18.5 weeks.

That compares to 29.2 weeks in 2020.

The longest wait times in the country were in Nova Scotia at 53.2 weeks.

According to the study, the median wait time in this province from GP to specialist is about 10.4 weeks, while the wait from specialist to treatment is approximately 10.7 weeks—that’s well below the Canadian median wait times of 11.1 and 14.5 weeks respectively.

The Fraser Institute says data was collected between January 15th and July 27th of 2021, a longer period than that used in years prior to the pandemic, however, the response rate was only 9 per cent, meaning that the findings should be interpreted with caution.