Canada

In years past I've had shorter wait times due to late night injuries from sports or hockey. I've always driven to smaller hospitals on the edges of town.

I'm not sure today how quickly that would go. A couple of years ago I broke a bone in my foot during a road trip in northern BC. They treated me in a small town were I was the only patient that day. I was treated by a GP and Nurse on a 2 week rotation from Saskatoon as there was no BC doctors for this small town. They didn't have the air cast I needed but told me I could deal with that at my ER when I get home to Vancouver.

A week later when I got home I spent 8 hours one day at the local ER before I left due to a crazy medial situation that was erupting in the ER that I felt uncomfortable with, then the next day when I returned it was another 4+ hours waiting to see a doctor for the cast. Then I was able to get a referral to a specialist from there.

Most people would prefer to go to a drop in clinic before ERs but often the clinics are full for the day by the first hour they are open. There's limits on how many patients they can see. If you have a illness many can't wait the 2-4 weeks it takes to see a family GP so the walk in clinics (which are becoming more by appointment only) become that next stop before the catch all of the ER. I can't imagine the BS those sick that need a note for work from a Doctor do.

I had a minor surgery in the summer. There was minor complications afterwards. It was 2 weeks before I could even do a phone consult with the family GP and then the walk in clinics were full. I was lucky to have one of the local clinics have me to wait around at the end of the day to see if they could squeeze me in to tend to my bandage issues. If they didn't I was looking at a 2-3 day game of trying to find a clinic each morning.

In Vancouver I know someone that went to a thing called "Urgent Care" on a Sunday to get meds for her senior mother that had covid. The urgent care was there to take the load off the ER. After waiting 3 hours in there to see a healthcare person they were told they don't issue prescriptions there and they would need to go to the ER for the prescription which was another long wait. It's a good thing she wasn't too sick /s.

There are issues with the timing of prescriptions, how far out they can be issued, and combined with the time frames it can take to see your GP many end up at the ER as a stop gap measure especially seniors if they lose track of their prescriptions.

There are also huge issues with nurses/care aids doing home care. Often there aren't enough and seniors that rely on them for in home care need to wait for a day or two extra for those visits when there is enough staff. I saw this with my senior family members first hand just before Covid.

I fear it's going to get worse before it gets better from here.

It's not any better in Alberta. :-(

In BC you can "play games" with the medical and go to smaller communities and find a Emergency Care Clinic that serves a smaller community.

Family doctors are impossible to get. There are more than a million people on the waiting lists.

To be fair, the government is making some progress on improving things. They've made changes to allow more doctors to be certified. They've pumped money into training programs (they pay a full salary and all tuition at university for some certifications). It's not perfect but it is something.

Edit: fixed some words that got mangled on mobile

You hope there is an ambulance nearby that can help but likely hood of that is slim as well, as they are understaffed by hundreds of paramedics, or...you die. Our regional hospital ER wait time right now is between 5 and 7 1/2 hours on Tuesday, at lunch time. That's an hour away. Weekends you just don't go. Family docs are non-existent so many have to ER just for a scrip.