A new study from the Fraser Institute has found that patients in Newfoundland and Labrador waiting for necessary medical treatment lost out on thousands of dollars in wages last year.

The study draws upon another survey by the institute in 2024 in which physicians reported the national average wait time from specialist appointment to treatment to be 15 weeks.

The Institute says an estimated 1.5-million patients had to wait for medically necessary treatments in 2024, resulting in an average of nearly $3,400 lost.

Newfoundland and Labrador comes in slightly above the national average at nearly $3,700. Prince Edward Island had the highest amount of lost time at nearly $6,600, while Nova Scotia had the lowest per-patient cost at less than $2,400.

Nadeen Esmail of the Fraser Institute says wait times for medical treatment in Canada are far behind some other developed countries.

He says the Canadian healthcare system has some of the longest wait times in the developed world. He argues that other countries can deliver such care in a matter of days—not weeks or months—and the federal government needs to look at ways of reducing those wait times, given that residents are paying for one of the most expensive healthcare systems in the developed world.