Fifth Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada, 2023 – Canada.ca

The fifth annual report on MAID in Canada was published in December 2024.  (These things take a while.)

The headline news is that rates of MAiD increased in 2023 but only by 15.8% by contrast with the 30+% increases of the previous 2 years.   In raw numbers 15 343 people had MAiD in 2023, and of those the vast majority were track1 (95.9%), people whose natural death was reasonably foreseeable.  The average age of MAiD recipients was 77.6 years and the most commonly cited medical condition was cancer, with neurological and respiratory conditions following closely.  (More than one condition can be listed.)

The report draws attention to the medical conditions of “frailty,” chronic pain and dementia (sometimes listed in the “other” category of medical conditions as representing some challenges for MAiD assessors and providers.

The most commonly cited conditions of suffering are: “loss of ability to engage in meaningful activities,” (95.5%) and “loss of the ability to perform the activities of daily living.” (87.3%) (More than one condition can be listed.)  If we zoom out a little could these ideas be seen as representing – at least for those who choose MAiD, a core understanding of the conditions necessary to have a worthwhile life – the ability to engage in meaningful activities and take basic care of oneself.

The report contains some analysis of socio-demographic considerations.  At a high level there is no data to suggest that people who receive MAiD come disproportionately from lower income or disadvantaged communities.  Please see the full report for details.

The average length of time between approval of eligibility for MAiD and its provision was 13.6 days.  In some cases a transfer of facility was required before MAiD could be administered.  In Ontario 8% of cases required a transfer of facility and of that 8% 42% were required because of institutional prohibitions on the provision of MAiD.

Those of you with a system frame of mind might have wondered what the financial/economic impact of MAiD might be.  The evidence is pretty sparse (both here in Canada and elsewhere.)  A review article from 2024 can be found here: Policies and cost analyses of voluntary assisted dying (VAD) laws – a mapping review & analysis | Health Economics Review | Full Text but it mainly refers to the Canadian Parliamentary Budget Office: Cost estimate for Bill C7 Medical Assistance n Dying found here Untitled from October 2020 as the track 2 expansion to Maid was being introduced.  The bottom line in that document was that if MAiD deaths represented 2.2% of total annual deaths then the estimated cost savings would be approximately $149 annually.  (This might seem like a lot, but that represents less than 1% of Canada’s annual health care budget in 2021.) And please note there are many assumptions built in to those estimates.  Annual MAiD death rates in 2023 were 4.7% so the savings are proportionately higher.