Quebec ER capacity rises broadly as prolonged stays increase

Quebec's latest emergency department data show a broad week-over-week increase in capacity, accompanied by higher counts of patients remaining in the ER for more than 24 and 48 hours.

From September 7 to 13, 2026, average ER capacity across the same 107 installations rose to 84.1% from 82.0% the previous week. Capacity increased in 12 of the 15 regions represented in the available data, making the change considerably broader than a rise concentrated in only a few facilities or regions.

The average reported count of patients present for more than 24 hours also increased, to 5.03 from 4.54 per observation, while the corresponding count for patients present more than 48 hours rose to 1.89 from 1.68.

Most regions moved higher

Several regions contributed to the overall increase.

In Chaudière-Appalaches, average capacity rose to 109.3% from 98.4%. Laval increased to 160.7% from 151.1%, while Lanaudière rose to 113.4% from 107.3%. In Montréal, the average increased to 128.1% from 123.8%.

Other regions moved in the opposite direction. Average capacity in Montérégie declined to 122.6% from 129.1%. Côte-Nord fell to 55.3% from 62.6%, while Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean declined to 55.9% from 62.2%.

Taken together, the regional results point to a broadly distributed increase: four out of every five regions represented in the available data recorded higher average capacity than during the previous week.

Longer stays increased as well

The prolonged-stay indicators generally moved in the same direction as capacity.

The reported count of patients present for more than 24 hours increased in 11 of the 15 regions. For patients present for more than 48 hours, eight regions recorded an increase, two recorded a decrease and five were unchanged.

Across all observations, the average count of patients present for more than 24 hours increased by about 0.49 per observation, while the average count present for more than 48 hours increased by about 0.21.

These figures describe reported operational conditions at the time of each observation. They do not establish why patients remained in emergency departments for those periods and should not be interpreted as measures of clinical quality or safety.

A directly comparable group of installations

The September 7–13 analysis is based on the same 107 installations as the August 31–September 6 comparison week. The latest week contained 17,960 observations, compared with 17,962 during the previous week.

That stable installation group provides a directly comparable basis for the week-over-week analysis: the change is not the result of different facilities entering or leaving the dataset between the two weeks.

Some Quebec emergency department data are currently unavailable at the source, including data for Mauricie–Centre-du-Québec and Nord-de-l'Île-de-Montréal. The analysis therefore reflects the installations for which data were available consistently during both weeks.

Average capacity and prolonged-stay figures in this article were calculated across the reporting observations retrieved for each seven-day period. Regional changes compare the same Monday-to-Sunday periods.

This article is based on publicly reported healthcare data and is provided for informational purposes only.