While many Greater Victoria medical clinics have shifted their services to a combination of appointment-based – including by-phone consultations – and walk-in service, patients in the latter category have become accustomed to long waits.

The situation here has become so dire, however, that clinics in the Capital Region now lead the way by a wide margin in terms of longest average wait times in the country to see a physician as a walk-in patient, according to a new report from Canadian tech company Medimap.