“• In 2023–2024, there were 3.05 million acute inpatient hospitalizations in Canada, up from 2.96 million visits in 2022–2023. After adjusting for differences in age, sex and population growth, the hospitalization rate was 6,992 per 100,000 population.
“• The age-adjusted average length of stay (LOS) in hospital was 7.3 days in 2023–2024, consistent with the previous year.
“• The most common reason for hospitalization in 2023–2024 was giving birth, with an average acute LOS of 2.1 days. This was followed by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and bronchitis (7.1 days) and heart failure (9.6 days).
“• The most common inpatient surgery in Canada in 2023–2024 was a Caesarean section (C-section), with an average acute LOS of 2.7 days. This was followed by knee replacement (2.5 days) and hip replacement (6.1 days).”
Source: Canadian Institute for Health Information. Hospital stays in Canada, 2023–2024. Accessed April 10, 2025.
Hospital beds per 1,000 population, 2021: 2.6
Average length of stay in hospital, 2021: 7.8 days
Average number of in-person doctor consultations per person, 2021: 4.7
CT scanners per million population, 2021: 15
CT exams per 1,000 population, 2021: 144
MRI units per million population, 2021: 10
MRI exams per 1,000 population, 2021: 62
PET scanners per million population, 2021: 2
PET exams per 1,000 population, 2021: 3
Long-term care beds in institutions and hospitals per 1,000 population aged 65 years and over, 2021
– Institutions: 46.7
– Hospitals: 2.5
Source: OECD (2023), Health at a Glance 2023: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, doi.org/10.1787/7a7afb35-en.
Hospital Beds Per 1,000 Population (2020): 2.55
Doctors Consultations (In All Settings) (Number Per Capita) (2019): 6.6
Hospital Average Length of Stay (All Causes) (2020): 8.2 Days
Computed Tomography Scanners (Per Million Population) (2019): 14.6
Magnetic Imaging Resonance Units (Per Million Population) (2019): 10.05
Mammographs (Per Million Population) (2021): 17.47
Source: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. OECD.Stat. Last accessed Oct. 19, 2022.
“The number of acute care beds per capita has fallen continuously during the past two decades. In this respect, the trend in Canada is similar to the trend observed in comparator OECD countries (Fig. 4.1). Over the 7 years from 2010 to 2017, however, the hospitalization rate increased by 4% in Canada, even though most of the smaller (less populous) provinces and territories experienced a decline in hospitalization rates (Table 4.1). This differing trend in hospitalizations between the smaller and larger provinces reflects the initially higher hospitalization rates in the smaller jurisdictions, thus there was more room for efficiency improvements (shifting care outside hospital or to day surgeries) than in the larger provinces. At the same time, the average length of stay (ALOS) in Canadian acute care hospitals, after standardizing for changes in the age and sex distribution, declined slightly from 7.5 days in 1995–1996, to 6.9 days in 2017–2018 (CIHI, 2019c). As shown in Table 4.2, Canada has a higher ALOS in hospitals than all other comparable countries except Germany, and a significantly higher occupancy rate than the other countries, a pattern that has been consistent over the past decade (OECD, 2019).”
Source: Marchildon G.P., Allin S., Merkur S. Canada: Health system review. Health Systems in Transition, 2020; 22(3): i–194.
“Since almost all hospital care is considered a fully insured service under the Canada Health Act and PT medicare plans, public funding is critical to decisions concerning capital expansion and improvement. Public budgeting rules at the PT level require that governments and their delegated health authorities carry capital expenditures as current liabilities. As a consequence, there has been an incentive to reduce capital expenditures more than operating expenditures during periods of budgetary restraint. In addition, governments and health authorities sometimes prefer not to carry the burden of financing infrastructure “up front”.
“While some governments and delegated health authorities have explored private finance initiatives (PFI) – known as public–private partnerships or “P3s” in Canada – to finance, manage and deliver health services, it has been more common to contract out the delivery of care to private companies or professional corporations. Almost all free-standing medical laboratories (not including those in hospital and public health laboratories) are owned by private corporations (Sutherland, 2011). In some provinces, premium payments offered by workers’ compensation schemes in combination with the looser regulatory controls placed on diagnostic clinics and the desire by most provincial ministries of health to contract out to private medical laboratories has generated a market for private-for-profit facilities (Hurley et al., 2008; Sutherland, 2011).”
Source: Marchildon G.P., Allin S., Merkur S. Canada: Health system review. Health Systems in Transition, 2020; 22(3): i–194.
Canadian Health System Overview
Health System Rankings
Health System Outcomes
Coverage and Access
Costs for Consumers
Health System Expenditures
Health System Financing
Preventive Healthcare
World Health Systems Facts is a project of the Real Reporting Foundation. We provide reliable statistics and other data from authoritative sources regarding health systems and policies in the US and sixteen other nations.
Page last updated April 10, 2025 by Doug McVay, Editor.