Twenty-Nine Weeks: The Risk Sitting Inside Your Senior Team

What Canada’s wait times mean for the people your business depends on.

Ask most owners and senior executives to name their biggest operational risk and they’ll point to supply chain, cyber, or customer concentration. Few name the key people who manage the company and consider the impact if someone has a serious health incident and can’t get timely access to diagnostic testing and treatment.

Wait times are growing

The Fraser Institute regularly surveys Canadian medical specialists. Its most recent, Waiting Your Turn report puts the 2025 median Canadian wait from family doctor referral to treatment at 28.6 weeks (208% longer than in 1993). Accessing timely diagnostic testing can be a real challenge. Ontario, the country’s strongest performer, has a median wait time of 8.8 weeks for a CT scan and approximately 18.1 weeks for an MRI 

What does 5-to-7-month treatment delay look like inside your company, if the delay directly impacts you, or another key manager the business depends upon?

The operational risk could be much higher than anticipated

Gallup and SHRM put the cost of replacing an employee at 50% to 200% of annual salary for the most senior roles. For someone with real responsibility earning over $150,00 a year, that could translate to $300,000 to $500,000, possibly more if someone must stop working because of a health issue and a contract is lost, a deal stalled or business operations seriously disrupted

And departure is the less likely outcome. The common scenario is a senior leader working through 29 weeks of pain, fatigue or fear at sixty percent capacity: still in the seat, still signing off, no longer sharp. Nothing triggers. No claim is filed. Key person insurance responds to death or total disability — not to two quarters of degraded judgment at the top of the org chart.

What’s the size and impact of this risk for your management team?

How to close the gap

This is the space our executive health care program was built to fill. It includes three key components: shape.

• A comprehensive assessment. A half-day, multidisciplinary head-to-toe review at a clinic such as Medcan or Cleveland Clinic Canada in Toronto — up to 15 diagnostic tests, same-day results, an action plan. It informs the family physician rather than replacing them.
• Ongoing access between assessments. Same or next-day appointments, a nurse and coordinator chasing referrals and results, coaching so findings turn into follow-through.
• Insurance to shorten diagnostic and treatment. MRI or CT in as few as 72 hours instead of 18 weeks, expert second opinions, and up to $1,000,000 for private treatment anywhere in the world when the expertise in Canada is not available on a timely basis. For example , an executive with a knee injury who faced a five-week MRI wait was able to access an MRI in two days, and complete surgery within two weeks instead of 35-week wait he would have otherwise faced.

The assessment finds the problem early. The insurance provides the means to access the best treatment option anywhere in the world outside of Canada dramatically reducing wait times and ensuring top quality care.

The question worth asking

None of this is secret. The wait time data is published every December by the Faser Institute. What’s missing isn’t information — it’s an assessment of the risk to your organization and the actions you should take to protect your organization and its key people from the impact of serious health event. 

If you’ve never put a number on that exposure, it’s worth exploring and acting upon your findings.

Sources: Fraser Institute, Waiting Your Turn (2022, 2025) and The Private Cost of Public Queues (2026); Gallup and SHRM turnover estimates.