Revealed: How many NBers left Horizon ERs without being treated

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More than 41,000 patients walked out of Horizon Health Network hospital emergency rooms without being seen during the 2024-2025 fiscal year, according to a new report – and Vitalité Health Network says it has no idea how often that happened in its facilities.

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The report, from Montreal Economic Institute (MEI), a non-profit think-tank, asked health authorities across the country for data about ER visits that ended with the patient leaving despite not being treated.

On a percentage basis, Horizon’s number was the third-highest among provinces.

“In 2024, Horizon Health Network recorded over 320,000 emergency room visits. Of these, 41,236 ended with a patient leaving before receiving treatment, representing 12.9 per cent of all visits,” the report read. “Patients in New Brunswick’s anglophone health network walk away from emergency rooms without receiving care at a rate that is higher than the national average of 7.8 per cent.”

Horizon’s walkout rate between April 1 last year and March 31 this year was 12.9 per cent, only lower than Manitoba (13.23 per cent) and Prince Edward Island (14.15 per cent). The lowest walkout rate was in Ontario (4.92 per cent), followed by British Columbia (5.47 per cent), and Alberta (8.7 per cent).

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The report also collected walkout data from the last few years, and it shows New Brunswick’s problem has gradually grown, with one notable but temporary dip. In 2021, the walkout percentage was about 9.5. A year later, it was just over 12 per cent. In 2023, it dropped back to about 11.7 per cent before spiking again in 2024-2025.

The report also examined the rate of walkouts based on patients’ sickness, or acuity level.

“The analysis of this distribution of patients having left an ER untreated is a second useful indicator to better understand the situation in the country’s emergency rooms,” the report read.

“In 2024, one in two patients leaving an ER before being treated was classified as a semi-urgent or non-urgent case. This result is hardly surprising in so far as these patients are not prioritized by health professionals, given the relatively mild nature of their condition. They must therefore wait longer than those in more urgent need of care. This pattern, observed in Manitoba, Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador, testifies to a lack of access to primary care and minor emergency care.

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“While these patients do not have the most pressing of medical needs, they still need care, without which their condition may worsen. Among these typical cases are a patient showing up with a cut requiring stitches where bleeding is controlled or a patient needing a dressing changed or a prescription renewed who then leaves without having been treated.”

The Holt government has been focused on improving access to primary care, and has promised to open at least 30 collaborative health clinics by 2028.

In a press release accompanying the report, MEI spokesperson Samantha Dagres said patients who leave “are not leaving because they feel better, but because the system is failing them.”

“Thousands of New Brunswickers are being denied access to care each year,” Dagres said, before turning her focus on the province’s francophone health network.

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“While the data we received from Horizon doesn’t paint a pretty picture, Vitalité’s failure to respond to our requests for information is especially troubling. You can’t fix what you can’t measure, and Vitalité’s lack of response makes it seem like patients leaving the ER untreated simply aren’t a priority for its leadership.”

On Monday, Brunswick News also asked Vitalité for its data.

“After checking with our team, we are unable to provide the requested statistics. We are, however, exploring ways to accurately track such data in the future,” an unnamed spokesperson replied on Tuesday night.

Greg Doiron, Horizon’s vice president of clinical operations, said the health network takes MEI’s “report and the data that was shared very seriously.”

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“Every patient who leaves without being seen represents someone who needed care, and that’s unacceptable. It reflects numbers. The numbers reflect the systemic pressure that we have in the entire system.”

That pressure has been showing for months.

As of Wednesday afternoon, The Moncton Hospital was at 102 per cent of its capacity. In Fredericton, that percentage was 107, and it was 103 in Saint John. Waterville’s hospital is currently at 110 per cent of capacity, and Miramichi’s hospital is at 114.

Four of those five hospitals are currently in a 120-day protocol that moves any alternate level of care patient waiting for placement into a long-term care facility to the top of the wait list. But even that hasn’t reduced the number of patients to a level below each hospital’s capacity.

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“What’s important to note is when we’re at high occupancy or high ALC (patient levels) … (people) end up waiting for care waiting in the emergency departments. This takes up precious space to provide emergency care, and leads to our ability – or lack thereof – to provide care as timely manner as we’d like,” Doiron said.

MEI’s report says it chose to examine how many patients left ERs because it “provides a telling indicator of access to emergency care: the less the health system is able to meet the needs of the population in terms of care, the higher this ratio will be.”

“According to the data collected, out of 16,297,628 emergency room visits in 2024 (across Canada), 1,267,736 patients left without having been treated, which is 7.78 per cent of the total, or around one in every 13 visits.”

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