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Wait Times for Surgery, Therapeutic Treatment Up Slightly: Fraser Institute

Posted on: Monday, 15 October 2007, 18:00 CDT

By THE CANADIAN PRESS

TORONTO - A new study from the Fraser Institute says the waiting time for surgery and other therapeutic treatments for the typical Canadian rose slightly in 2007.

Last year, the median wait from the time of referral by a general practitioner to treatment by a specialist was 17.8 weeks, compared to 18.3 weeks in 2007.

The shortest wait was 15 weeks in Ontario, followed by British Columbia at 19 weeks and Quebec at 19.4 weeks.

The study, entitled "Waiting Your Turn: Hospital Waiting Lists in Canada," found the longest wait in Saskatchewan, at 27.2 weeks. The next longest waits were in New Brunswick, at 25.2 weeks and Nova Scotia, at 24.8 weeks.

Those in the queue for treatment from a medical or radiation oncologist, or elective cardiovascular surgery, experienced the shortest waits, while the longest waits were for orthopedic surgery, plastic surgery and neurosurgery.

The report says the slight increase in total waiting time this year is primarily due to an increase in the time between the visit to the family doctor where a complaint is first raised and getting in to see a specialist.

Nadeem Esmail, co-author of the report, said the provincial governments are mainly focused on reducing wait times between a visit to a specialist and treatment in a number of priority areas.

Hip and knee replacements, cataracts, cardiac revascularization and cancer were identified as priorities by the first ministers in 2004.

"There's ... the squeezing of the balloon effect - that is when you try to shrink wait times in one area of the system without dealing with the core problem, which is a structural problem, what you'll do is end up growing waiting times in other areas," he said in an interview Monday from Calgary.

He also said the aging of the population has had an impact on the demand for health-care services, and there may be some "pent-up demand" from people who believe they can get treatment in a more reasonable time frame now that wait times in certain areas have been reduced.

In February, a report by the Canadian Institute for Health Information found that more than 40,000 additional surgeries were performed last year in wait-time priority areas, but it didn't cause a dip in other surgeries.

But a survey of 640 surgeons released the same month by the Ontario Medical Association painted a different picture. Thirty-five per cent of respondents felt they were providing fewer services in areas outside the wait-times strategy, while 20 per cent said services in the non-targeted areas were being "cannibalized" to meet the wait-time goals.

The Fraser Institute study found that on average, in all specialties, only 8.4 per cent of patients are on waiting lists because they requested a delay or postponement of their treatment.

"The responses range from a low of 5.7 per cent of internal medicine patients requesting a delay of treatment, to a high of 12.8 per cent of gynecology patients requesting a delay of treatment," the report states.

"Conversely, the percentage of patients who would have their surgeries within the week if there were an operating room available averages 52.9 per cent, ranging from 37.5 per cent of gynecology patients to 71.8 per cent of radiation oncology patients."

Source: Canadian Press

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