A paramedic loads his stretcher back into the ambulance after bringing a patient to the emergency room at a hospital in Montreal, April 14, 2022. The Canadian Press/Ryan Remiorz
Quebec emergency room patients are waiting longer than they did several years ago, with the provincial median ER stay increasing by 41 minutes since 2018 and exceeding 14 hours at one Montreal hospital this year, according to a new report from the Montreal Economic Institute (MEI).
The report examines wait times at 115 emergency rooms across the province, using data from the Quebec Health Ministry for the 2025–26 fiscal year.
It found that the median ER wait time in Quebec rose from four hours and 31 minutes in 2018 to five hours and 12 minutes provincewide in 2025–26.
“Despite the rapid increase in healthcare spending, Quebecers continue to wait longer and longer when they go to an ER,” said MEI’s vice president of communications Renaud Brossard in an Aug. 20 release.
“This shows that the problem is not about funding, but about the way the system is organized,” he added.
The report ranks CLSC de Grande-Vallée emergency facility in Grande-Vallée, Que., in the Gaspésie region in top place for shortest median stay, at one hour and 14 minutes, followed by the CLSC de Pohénégamook in Pohénégamook, Que., at one hour. The CLSC de Murdochville had the third-shortest wait at one hour and 32 minutes.
The report found the highest provincial median ER stay of 14 hours and 23 minutes at the Pavillon Albert-Prévost Hospital in Montreal, followed by nine hours and 45 minutes at Montreal’s Royal Victoria Hospital.
The report indicates a significant divide between different regions of Quebec, showing shorter ER stays in mainly rural eastern Quebec regions such as Gaspésie and Bas-Saint-Laurent.
By contrast, the report records significantly longer median wait times in more densely populated areas of southern Quebec, including Laval, Montérégie, the Laurentians, and Montreal.
This regional divide echoes results from MEI’s 2025 report, which found that the median Quebec ER stay in 2024-2025 lasted five hours and 23 minutes, the longest median wait time in Canada for provinces with available data.
Time Until Assessment
The new rankings also track the median time patients wait from arrival at the ER until they are first seen by a physician.
In this category, despite having the longest median stay in the province, Pavillon Albert-Prévost ranked at the top, coming in at four minutes, with the CLSC de Murdochville following at 35 minutes, and the CLSC de Grande-Vallée at 36 minutes.
Montreal General Hospital also came in near the top in this category in sixth place, with a median ER duration from admission to discharge of 42 minutes.
This data appears to show that lengthy median stays in the ER at some of the busier hospitals occur after patients are assessed, though the report doesn’t specify.
Overcrowded ERs have been an ongoing challenge in Quebec, with some large Montreal hospital emergency departments running at over 200 percent capacity in January 2025 following the holidays.
The province formed the new health-care agency, Santé Québec in December 2024 to assume responsibility of provincial health-care facilities, with two of the stated goals of the new agency formation being reduction of ER and surgical wait times.
