For patients in need of services covered by Medicare, the typical waittoseeadoctor was two or three weeks, and the appointments were made by answering machine.
Not long ago, falling sick usually meant a visit toa government facility - often with an interminable waittoseeadoctor, a brief examination and a swift exit through the door with a bag of unspecified tablets.
Dr Chisholm warned that government reforms - including a maximum 48 hour waittoseea family doctor - would be impossible to deliver unless more GPs were recruited and more funds made available.
The study further revealed that, as a result of low payments to physicians, kids on Medicaid wait 22 days longer toseeadoctor than kids with private health coverage.
For example, the average waittoseea new family doctor in this country is just under three weeks, according toa 2009 survey by medical consultancy Merritt Hawkins.