“We can’t just use the excuse that it’s bad everywhere,” Health Minister Cory Deagle said Wednesday in the legislature, calling physician recruitment “underwhelming.” More than 30,000 Islanders remain on the patient registry despite a 2023 promise to eliminate the waitlist by April 2025, CBC News reported.
Deagle made the comments while responding to Liberal MLA Gord McNeilly about Islanders waiting for access to primary care. Then-premier Dennis King promised in 2023 that every Islander would be signed up with a doctor or nurse practitioner by April 2025.
The minister said the province must move away from the expectation that every patient has an individual practitioner. “The idea that everyone is going to have their own practitioner … is just not realistic,” Deagle said. “We have to affiliate to the entity,” he added, meaning patients would be cared for by teams in patient medical homes rather than a single provider.
Hip and Knee Replacement Waits Rank Among Worst in Canada
Deagle also addressed surgical backlogs, telling Progressive Conservative MLA Tyler DesRoches that wait times for hip and knee replacements are “not good.” The province is “actually one of the worst within Canada,” he said, with waits that can exceed two years according to provincial numbers.
Twenty-Four Physicians Recruited So Far in 2026
An email from the province to CBC News states that 24 additional physicians have been recruited so far in 2026: 18 specialists and six family doctors. The number of people on the patient registry has decreased by about 5,000, Deagle said.
UPEI Patient Medical Home Model Advances After Consultations
Deagle said Health P.E.I. has made “significant strides over the last eight months” toward connecting patients with medical homes, and progress will continue in coming months. The UPEI patient medical home model, while new to Prince Edward Island, is already used in other Canadian provinces, he noted.
Over the summer, the province consulted with the medical society and the nurses’ union on how the model would work, Deagle said. “What we’ve done over the summer is work with the medical society, the nurses’ union, all the folks that are involved, to sit down with them and go over, how is this model going to work to affiliate to the building itself, to the patient medical home, not necessarily the prescriber,” he said.
“For once, they actually feel like we’re sitting down with them before we implement something to hear their feedback,” Deagle said of the consultations.
P.E.I. Health Waitlist: The Numbers
How many Islanders are still waiting for a primary care provider?
More than 30,000 Islanders remain on the patient registry, according to CBC News, despite a 2023 promise to eliminate the list by April 2025.
What is a patient medical home?
It is a team-based model where patients are affiliated with a clinic or building rather than a single doctor or nurse practitioner. Health Minister Cory Deagle said this approach is used in other provinces across Canada.
How long are the waits for hip and knee replacements in P.E.I.?
According to provincial numbers cited by CBC News, waits can be more than two years, and the province ranks among the worst in Canada for these surgeries.