Emergency-room waits in Alberta are often discussed as a provincial problem. The data shows something more specific: Edmonton’s major hospitals are carrying some of the longest waits in the province, and the gap with Calgary has widened over time.
The clearest apples-to-apples comparison comes from the Canadian Institute for Health Information, or CIHI. Its emergency-department indicator measures the time from triage or registration until a patient is first assessed by a physician.
The figures below use the 90th percentile. That means 90 per cent of patients were seen within the reported time. It is not the average wait and it is not the total amount of time a patient spent in the emergency department.
Edmonton is worse than Calgary on the annual measure
For 2024-25, CIHI data puts the Edmonton Zone’s 90th-percentile wait to first physician assessment at 7.0 hours. Calgary Zone was 5.7 hours. Alberta overall was 5.4 hours.
| Area | 90% saw a physician within |
|---|---|
| Edmonton Zone | 7.0 hours |
| Calgary Zone | 5.7 hours |
| Alberta | 5.4 hours |
CIHI defines the indicator as the time between the earlier of triage or registration and the physician’s initial assessment. Lower is better. Alberta has complete reporting coverage in the CIHI dataset, which makes the Edmonton-Calgary comparison particularly useful.
The major Edmonton hospitals are higher again
The city-wide number hides even longer waits at Edmonton’s largest adult hospitals.
| Hospital | 90% saw a physician within |
|---|---|
| University of Alberta Hospital | 9.3 hours |
| Royal Alexandra Hospital | 8.5 hours |
| Sturgeon Community Hospital | 6.7 hours |
| Stollery Children’s Hospital | 5.4 hours |
Calgary’s busiest adult emergency departments were also under pressure, but generally lower on the same measure:
| Hospital | 90% saw a physician within |
|---|---|
| South Health Campus | 7.8 hours |
| Foothills Medical Centre | 7.5 hours |
| Peter Lougheed Centre | 7.5 hours |
| Rockyview General Hospital | 6.4 hours |
The comparison does not mean every patient waited that long. Critically ill and injured patients are triaged first. It does show how long the wait became for the slowest 10 per cent of patients included in the annual data.
Edmonton waits have nearly doubled in four years
The longer-term trend is as important as the latest number.
| Fiscal year | Edmonton Zone | Calgary Zone |
|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | 3.7 h | 2.7 h |
| 2021-22 | 4.6 h | 3.9 h |
| 2022-23 | 6.1 h | 5.3 h |
| 2023-24 | 6.6 h | 5.5 h |
| 2024-25 | 7.0 h | 5.7 h |
That is an increase of about 89 per cent in Edmonton over four years. Calgary increased by about 111 per cent over the same period.
Calgary deteriorated faster in percentage terms because it started from a lower base. Edmonton nevertheless remains worse on the latest annual measure.
The University of Alberta Hospital followed the same pattern, rising from about 4.9 hours in 2020-21 to 9.3 hours in 2024-25 at the 90th percentile. Royal Alexandra rose from about 4.4 hours to 8.5 hours.
Why people sometimes see 10-, 12- or 15-hour waits online
This is where two different measures are often confused.
Alberta Health Services publishes live estimated emergency-department wait times. Those numbers are a snapshot of current conditions and can move sharply through the day.
AHS says its live estimate predicts how long an average, mid-acuity patient arriving at that moment may wait from triage until seeing a physician. The calculation uses the number and acuity of patients already in the department together with physician staffing and other available resources. It is recalculated every two minutes.
That is why a live Edmonton hospital estimate can be much higher than the annual 7.0-hour Edmonton Zone figure.
The annual CIHI number answers: How long did 90 per cent of patients wait over the entire year?
The live AHS number answers: Based on conditions right now, how long might a typical patient arriving now wait?
A particularly bad evening can therefore produce a double-digit live estimate without contradicting the CIHI annual figure.
Neither number is the total time spent in emergency
A third number is often mixed into the discussion: total emergency-department length of stay.
A patient may wait to see a doctor, then wait for testing, imaging, treatment, consultation or admission. CIHI treats those as separate parts of the emergency visit.
Across Canada in 2024-25, half of emergency patients waited just under two hours for an initial physician assessment, while roughly one in ten waited more than five hours. CIHI also found that the largest bottleneck for patients who are admitted to hospital often comes after the decision to admit, while they wait in the emergency department for an inpatient bed.
For admitted patients, CIHI says that inpatient-bed wait accounts for nearly two-thirds of their total emergency-department stay.
That helps explain why a patient can truthfully say they spent 12 or 15 hours in emergency even if the published wait-to-doctor measure is lower.
Edmonton’s problem is not just one bad day
The live AHS display can spike because of a sudden influx of patients, staffing levels or several high-acuity cases arriving at once. A single screenshot therefore says little about long-term performance.
The CIHI trend is harder to dismiss as a temporary surge.
Edmonton’s 90th-percentile wait rose in each of the five reported fiscal years, from 3.7 hours in 2020-21 to 7.0 hours in 2024-25.
The two largest adult emergency departments were worse still, with both the University of Alberta Hospital and Royal Alexandra Hospital above eight hours on the latest annual measure.
Calgary has also experienced substantial deterioration. Its zone-wide 90th-percentile wait more than doubled from 2.7 hours to 5.7 hours over the same period.
The difference is that Edmonton began with longer waits and remains higher.
What the numbers do — and do not — show
The CIHI data establishes that Edmonton’s wait to initial physician assessment has deteriorated substantially and is longer than Calgary’s on the latest annual data.
It does not, by itself, identify the cause.
CIHI says emergency waits are affected by patient acuity, staffing and hospital capacity, but also by pressures elsewhere in the health system. Patients who cannot access timely primary care may arrive in emergency instead. Hospitals with limited inpatient capacity can become backed up when admitted patients cannot be moved out of the emergency department.
That distinction matters when assigning responsibility. Long emergency waits can reflect problems inside an emergency department, but they can also be a symptom of shortages elsewhere in the health-care system.
How Alberta compares nationally
Alberta’s 2024-25 provincial result was close to the Canadian figure on CIHI’s physician-assessment measure. The province therefore does not stand out nationally in the way Edmonton does within Alberta.
The more important Alberta story is the internal divide: Edmonton is performing materially worse than the provincial average, while its two biggest adult hospitals are considerably worse again.
For patients watching the AHS website and seeing a double-digit estimate, that distinction matters. The live number may be temporary. The underlying deterioration is not.
Sources: Canadian Institute for Health Information, Emergency Department Wait Time for Physician Initial Assessment, September 2026 update; CIHI Emergency Department Wait Times in Canada report; Alberta Health Services estimated emergency-department wait-times methodology.
