Canadians appear to be more impatient about waiting to see a specialist than about delays for such health services as non-emergency surgery and diagnostic tests, a new Statistics Canada report suggested Tuesday.

Of those who said their waiting time was unacceptable, the proportion was highest for specialist visits, at 29 per cent, and diagnostic tests, 24 per cent, compared to 17 per cent for non-emergency surgery – even though Canadians are more likely to wait more than three months for such operations.

"This points to potential differences regarding thresholds for unacceptable waits across different specialized services – i.e. Canadians appear to be more willing to wait longer for surgery than for a visit to the specialist," Statistics Canada said.

(CP file photo.)

The report is based on responses from about 17,500 people who participated in the 2005 Canadian Community Health Survey.

About 2.8 million Canadians, or 11 per cent of those aged 15 or older, said they visited a specialist in the first half of last year.

Of those, 18 per cent reported facing problems accessing care from a specialist, while 70 to 80 per cent indicated their waiting times were acceptable, the report's authors found.

For the 2.1 million Canadians who got diagnostic tests, 15 per cent reported having trouble accessing care, such as waiting too long for an appointment or to get an MRI or CT scan. The results are similar to those reported in 2003.

Among the estimated 1.5 million people who had non-emergency surgery, 11 per cent reported having trouble accessing care. Of this group, 79 per cent said they had to wait too long, up from 62 per cent who called waiting a barrier in 2003.

"This may be a result of an increase in the proportion of patients waiting longer than three months for selected non-emergency surgery," the report's authors concluded.

"It may also be the case that patients' perception regarding waiting for care may have been influenced in recent years as a result of the intense focus and attention paid to this issue by both policy-makers and the media."

Nationally, median waiting times stayed about the same since 2003.

"The median waiting time was about four weeks for visits to specialists, four weeks for non-emergency and three weeks for diagnostic tests," the report said.

Provincially, there were some differences. For example, in Quebec median waits for non-emergency surgeries were more than halved to four weeks in 2005. And in New Brunswick, median waits for diagnostic tests doubled to four weeks in that time.

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The report's authors note the data is self-reported, and respondents may have had trouble recalling how long they waited, and many may have rounded the wait times.