Alberta doctors give health system poor marks in new report

A new report from the Alberta Medical Association (AMA) gives the province’s health-care system low grades, citing long emergency room wait times and ongoing difficulty finding a family doctor.

The AMA’s first-of-its-kind report found nearly 60 per cent of Albertans who visited an emergency room in the past year rated their experience as poor. One in five Albertans reported they don’t have a family doctor, and just over half said they were able to get an appointment when needed.

“We’ve gone through three family doctors in the last four years — two of them retired, and we had to find a new one,” said one Edmonton resident. “We’ve got one now, but it wasn’t easy.”

Another patient said it often takes up to two weeks to get an appointment. “Let’s say I call today — it takes one week, two weeks before I get a call for my appointment,” they said.

Emergency room wait times remain a major concern, with many patients saying they expect to wait hours for care.

“Oh, almost eight hours, but I knew I had to be in the hospital,” said another Edmontonian. “When you go to the university [hospital], you know you’re gonna wait a long time. But the problem is, people go to the hospital for things that aren’t related to an emergency.”

Dr. Shelly Duggan, president of the Alberta Medical Association, said the province must urgently address system strain caused by population growth.

“I think the biggest thing that we would like to see in the AMA is that we really need to get a handle on the population growth,” Duggan said. “And we need to get a handle on that population growth.”

In response, Alberta’s Ministry of Hospital and Surgical Health Services said the AMA’s survey — which gathered feedback from just over 1,100 people — does not represent the full range of patient experiences. The ministry pointed to recent investments in health care, including more physicians and hospital beds.

“We are also increasing the number of family physicians,” the ministry said in a statement. “As of the end of March 2025, Alberta had 12,123 registered physicians — an increase of 491 over the previous year, including a net gain of 317 family doctors. This represents the largest annual increase in recent history, with all five AHS zones seeing year-over-year growth.”

Despite that increase, the AMA says hundreds more doctors are still needed to meet the province’s growing health-care demands. The organization recently began tracking how many physicians arrive — and leave — Alberta, but those numbers won’t be available until next year.