Wait times for hip and knee replacements in Nova Scotia are now the shortest on record, bucking a trend seen throughout the rest of Canada where provincial waits are largely longer than they were a decade ago.
Last year, the median wait time in Nova Scotia was 103 days for a hip replacement, down from 173 in 2015, and 129 days for a knee replacement, down from 271 in 2015, according to a June report from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).
The report tracked wait times for elective procedures — including hip and knee replacements, radiation therapy and cataract surgery — from April to September of each calendar year since 2008.
The rate of hip and knee replacements completed in Nova Scotia within the nationally set benchmark grew by more than 20 per cent last year. Cathy Lynn Howley, a senior director of Nova Scotia’s Perioperative Clinical Network, attributes that to a multi-year strategy to improve patient flow.
“We recognized after the COVID-19 pandemic that the backlog and improving the wait times required more than just increasing the number of surgeries that were completed,” Howley said. “We really set out to refine how we manage and co-ordinate surgical access and care.”
That strategy involved expanding operating room capacity, modernizing referral and booking processes, recruiting specialists and utilizing provincial waitlist data to prioritize long-waiting patients, Howley said.
The nationally set target wait time for hip and knee replacements is 182 days.
Nova Scotia now has the next best rate of elective procedures being completed within that time frame, second only to Ontario, which historically has the shortest wait times. Nova Scotia had some of the longest wait times prior to 2024.
Dartmouth hospital performs 8 hip replacements in 1 day
The CIHI report found that one in 10 Nova Scotians still waited 374 days for a knee replacement and 289 days for a hip replacement in 2025. But both of those 90th percentile waits are down by about half compared to a decade ago.
In collaboration with the province, the Dartmouth General Hospital opened a new orthopedic surgery centre in 2019 and hired three additional orthopedic surgeons. The hospital is also reducing wait times by performing robot-assisted joint replacements, a method that allows most patients to be discharged less than 12 hours after surgery, freeing up inpatient beds.
“Funding that innovation culture is really, to me, what’s helped drive the success nationally,” said Dartmouth General Hospital Foundation CEO Stephen Harding.
Beyond wait times, Nova Scotia surgeons completed 966 hip replacements from April to September 2025, a provincial record since CIHI started tracking data in 2008.
Dr. Jhase Sniderman, an orthopedic surgeon at Dartmouth General, said 2026 should be even better, with the hospital on track to do between 1,500 and 2,000 joint replacements.
He’s doing his part to decrease waits by performing more joint replacements during limited operating room time. In February, Sniderman completed eight hip replacements in a single operating room on a single day, setting an Atlantic Canada record.
Sniderman, whose current waitlist is between six and nine months, said longer surgery waits leave patients with more pain and worse function.
“That has an impact on the rest of your health,” he said. “If you can’t move around or walk, your muscles deteriorate. It’s not good for your cardiovascular health either.”
Not all Nova Scotians face equal wait times. While patients in the province’s Eastern Zone — which includes the Cape Breton, Guysborough and Antigonish areas — could expect median waits of 69 days for a knee replacement in 2025, patients in the Western Zone of the Annapolis Valley, South Shore and South West faced median waits of 189 days.
Those waiting for hip replacements faced similar regional variations.
Howley said those gaps existed before the province’s targeted strategy, and the health authority is looking to adjust its resources, lengthen operating room time and perform procedures on the weekend to reduce wait times throughout Nova Scotia.
“Acknowledging that there are patients that are still waiting longer than others in the province, that is significant for some of those patients,” she said. “We have a focused effort on continuing to work towards decreasing these wait times and improving that access.”
The Central Zone, which includes the Halifax area, has the second longest wait times out of the four zones, despite having the most orthopedic surgeons in Nova Scotia.
Sniderman blamed that discrepancy on the large population Halifax hospitals serve, and their tendency to treat more complex cases. The Central Zone still performed more than double the number of hip and knee replacements than any other region.
Despite lower waits for joint replacements, waits for non-emergency treatment did not improve across the board. Nova Scotia has the second worst provincial rate of patients receiving radiation therapy by its 28-day benchmark.
While 99 per cent of patients in 2020 received the cancer treatment within the target time frame, just 87 per cent met the benchmark in 2025. In most other provinces, the rate of patients receiving treatment by the target was in the high 90s last year.
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