More Albertans are waiting longer than clinically recommended for critical cardiac and cancer surgeries, sparking concern among health experts and calls for urgent action.
While a record number of surgeries is being performed in the province, the number of people on Alberta’s waitlist is longer than it was two years ago.
And the latest provincial data (from October 2025) shows less than two-thirds (61 per cent) of patients had their surgeries completed within the recommended time period.
The trends are coming to light as the province pledges to improve surgical waits and as it forges ahead with a push to use chartered surgical facilities for less complex procedures.
“It scares me a little,” said Stacey Litvinchuk, who, as a former senior program officer for surgery operations and lead of the Alberta Surgical Initiative for Alberta Health Services, watches the numbers closely.
Litvinchuk is particularly worried about heart and cancer patients.
“We’re seeing wait times for cancer surgeries and cardiac surgeries get worse. They’re increasing,” said Litvinchuk, who now works as a health-care consultant.
The latest numbers show just 11 per cent of cardiac bypass (coronary artery bypass graft) surgeries performed in October 2025 were done within the recommended time frame.
During the same month in 2019, it was 60 per cent.
“It’s a critical surgery,” said Litvinchuk. “The wait time windows are two weeks or less.”
Instead, some people are waiting months for the surgery, she said.
“They could die of their disease … That’s very scary.”
Litvinchuk is equally concerned about cancer surgery trends.
Waits for the top five cancer surgeries (bladder, breast, colorectal, lung and prostate) are also deteriorating.
In October 2019, 65 per cent of those cancer surgeries were completed within recommended times.
Six years later, that dropped to just over half (51 per cent).
“If somebody’s waiting for a critical cancer surgery, their cancer could advance to points where we can’t treat it anymore,” said Litvinchuk.
The recommended treatment window for lung cancer patients, for example, is 14 days, according to Litvinchuk.
Provincial data shows the median wait (the time at which 50 per cent of people have received the surgery) is double that.
Just 31 per cent of patients had their prostate cancer surgeries done within recommended times, the latest numbers show.
Breast cancer patients are also facing longer waits.
“We are behind. We are not keeping up with the demand,” said Dr. May Lynn Quan, a Calgary general surgeon specializing in breast cancer.
In October 2025, the percentage of breast cancer surgeries performed within clinical targets was 57 per cent, compared to 81 per cent six years earlier.
According to Quan, the standard provincial target for most breast cancer patients (invasive breast cancer) is to have surgery within four weeks.
Many women, she said, are waiting twice as long.
“People are fearful that it’s growing out of control,” said Quan.
Most breast cancers, detected early through screening, are slow growing, she noted.
“But at some point it does matter … We sometimes find out later that the cancer was more aggressive than we thought. And at some point it goes from being isolated to the breast to spreading to lymph nodes.”
According to Quan, hospital staffing and capacity have not kept up with the growing number of Albertans with cancer.
“The part that’s alarming to me is that it’s not getting any better,” said Quan. “It’s getting worse.”
These trends are emerging as Alberta and other provinces struggle with shortages of health-care workers, including anesthesiologists, and the provincial government pushes to have more procedures, such as cataract surgeries and hip replacements, performed in chartered surgical facilities.
“They’re not creating any new capacity. They’re just shifting capacity,” said Litvinchuk, who argues this is playing out in the data.
“And what’s being sacrificed with that is access to critical surgeries.”
The provincial dashboard shows wait times for cataract surgeries have improved over time, with 63 per cent of patients getting their surgery within targets.
Hip replacements have improved slightly, and knee replacements are about the same as they were in 2019.
“We have operating rooms sitting empty in our public hospitals,” said Chris Gallaway, executive director with Friends of Medicare.
“Opening a new private centre didn’t create more surgeons or anesthesiologists, before-and-after care teams and nurses and so on. It simply moved where the workforce was working.”
Gallaway said he often hears from cancer patients who are shocked by the wait times.
“We really need to see urgent action for what is an urgent situation.”
The Alberta government acknowledges it needs to reduce surgical wait times, in particular for cancer.
It said several factors are driving the trends, including a growing and aging population, as well as seasonal and operational capacity fluctuations.
“Last year, Alberta delivered the highest annual surgical volumes on record,” said Kyle Warner, press secretary to the Minister of Hospital and Surgical Health Services.
During the 2024-25 fiscal year, 318,930 surgeries were completed. This fiscal, the province is on track to exceed 321,000, he said.
According to Warner, 62 per cent of surgeries were completed within clinically recommended wait times during the first three quarters of 2025-26.
He said a record number of cancer surgeries have been performed so far, and the province aims to complete 25,470 by the end of this fiscal year, which would be an eight per cent year-over-year increase.
“We will continue to invest in Alberta’s surgical capacity,” said Warner, pointing to the government’s plan to deliver 50,000 additional surgeries over three years by using chartered surgical facilities.
He said $377 million has been earmarked through the Alberta Surgical Initiative to fund more surgeries, along with $265 million to renovate and expand operating rooms and modernize equipment in public hospitals.
The ministry did not respond to specific concerns that chartered surgical facilities are drawing funding and staff away from traditional public hospitals.
“We will continue to leverage chartered surgical facilities for lower-complexity procedures so hospitals can focus on urgent and complex cases. Chartered Surgical Facilities are intended to complement, not replace, hospital-based surgical health services and will improve patient flow and support timely access to care,” said Warner.
“Our government remains committed to improving the timeliness and accessibility of health care in the province to ensure every Albertan receives the care they need within clinically recommended timelines.”
Meanwhile, Litvinchuk said longer waits for critical surgeries can lead to more pressure on already strained hospitals as more patients end up needing emergency care.
She is calling for detailed commitments from the provincial government, including funding to increase staffing for specific critical surgeries and opening shuttered operating rooms in Alberta’s public hospitals.
“The investment is just not in the right place,” she said.
