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Wait times for “non-priority” surgeries
Topic Started: Dec 10 2013, 09:26 AM (1,567 Views)
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It's remarks like that which make me correct.
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Berton
Dec 10 2013, 08:29 PM
The fact remains that she had to wait for 3 years and it is a common problem.
Really, I hear of one or 2 stories like that a year, if that, and I have never met or talked to anyone who has had that issue. There are always cases of people who fall through the cracks, not only in helath care.

Here for example, and I intentional use a right wing source, is a case of in the US. Not the same sort of thing but an example of the medical system failing people. If you dig intot hat case it looks liek a hsopital intentionally keeping a child hostage since the hospital is picking up government funding for her.

http://www.glennbeck.com/2013/12/06/update-15-year-old-girl-held-at-boston-children%E2%80%99s-hospital-against-parent%E2%80%99s-will-still-not-allowed-to-home/

BTW, wait timess are not only a Canadian phenomena, it happens in the US as well

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/739109

http://www.zimmetzimmet.com/library/medical-malpractice/man-dies-in-hospital-waiting-for-surgical-consult-volusia-county-medical-malpractice-attorney/


Now you are going to see more wait times in Canada or Australia simply because a higher proportion of th epopluation has access to health care. The factor that is not used in Comprison is the number of people in the US who do not get treated at all or avoid treatment they feel they cannot afford. IMO the statistics regarding overall health are the only ones you can use as a comparison of the effectiveness of health care systems and on that, Canada beats the US hands down.
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Neutral
Dec 11 2013, 01:30 AM
It's remarks like that which make me correct.
Well you have hardly demostrated you have the capability of saying much else other than snide comments from the sidelines. Its hard to find any originality of thought in any of your posts. At least other on the right here, like Pat & Ban and even Berton demonstrate they have something going on upstairs. You, I seldom see it.
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Mountainrivers
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telcoman
Dec 11 2013, 01:50 AM
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Dec 11 2013, 01:30 AM
It's remarks like that which make me correct.
Wrell youi ave hardly demostrated you have the capability of saying much else other than snide comments from the sidelines. Its hard to find any originaly of thought in any of your posts. At least other on the right here, like Pat & Ban and even Berton demonstrate they have something going on upstairs. You, I seldom see it.
Can't see what's not there.
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Berton
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Five priority areas for wait time reductions

In 2004, Canadian provinces agreed to a 10-Year Plan to Strengthen Health Care, with a major focus on wait times. The plan identified five priority areas for wait time reductions: cancer care, cardiac care, diagnostic imaging, hip and knee joint replacement and cataract surgery.

The plan set benchmarks for wait times in these areas, and involved a substantial amount of new funding – $1.7 billion in Ontario – to increase the volume of these procedures. It also mandated monitoring and annual public reporting of wait times in these five areas.

These efforts resulted in short-term improvements in wait times in the five priority areas in most provinces. However, while the National Wait Times Initiative was successful in increasing short-term volume of surgeries in priority areas, the volume of surgeries in non-priority areas stayed largely stable, with a small but steady decline in recent years.

The trouble for patients is that while the five priority areas are clearly very important, many non-priority surgeries are just as crucial to quality of life. In orthopedics (bone and joint surgery), for example, evidence shows the mental and physical disability caused by end-stage degenerative disease in the ankle is at least as severe as that caused by end-stage disease in the hip. Yet hip replacement surgery is a priority, while ankle replacement surgery is not.


Sure looks like a bureaucratic decision to me. Solely based on how much money the government has.

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Brewster
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For the Millions of people in the US with no insurance, ALL have wait times measured in years.

Bertie finds one case in Canada, and his childlike mind thinks that's worse.
Edited by Brewster, Dec 11 2013, 02:42 AM.
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Berton
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I see the child is still with us today.

Here is some more which shows it is not just "one case".

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Wait times for non-priority surgeries

In many cases, wait times for surgeries falling outside of priority areas lag well behind those identified as priorities.

In Ontario, 90% of patients receive foot surgery within 323 days, compared to 218 days for knee replacement and 183 days for hip replacement.

In Alberta, waits for foot surgery are more modest, but waits for another non-priority area – spinal surgery – are much longer: 90% of Albertan patients receive spinal surgery within 329 days, compared to 273 days for both knee and hip replacement.

But these measures are only half the story – they show only the wait from when surgery is scheduled to when it is performed. The earlier wait – from when patients are referred by their family doctor to when they actually see a surgeon – is not currently monitored in either Alberta or Ontario.

Tim Daniels, a foot and ankle surgeon at St. Michael’s Hospital, says the wait time to see foot and ankle specialists is much longer than to see most other orthopedic surgeons. He says many new patients must wait more than a year before he can see them, and the only reason his wait times aren’t longer is that he turns down roughly half of all new patients that are referred to him.
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Neutral
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I used to post many stories of Canadians having to wait, they got ignored too. It's very common in Canada, that's why many come here.
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Berton
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Narrow focus on waits had unintended consequences

“Foot and ankle fell off the table when wait times focused on hips and knees,” Alan Hudson, who spearheaded Ontario’s Wait Times Strategy until 2009, writes in an email. “Classic example of down side of target and financial incentive to do other things,” he says of targeted funding for hospitals to increase the number of knee and hip replacements, but not other kinds of orthopedic surgery.

Chris Simpson, Chair of the Wait Time Alliance, agrees. “The focus on the big five priority areas made for some very nice report cards for governments, but while we were making progress in those areas, everything else got left behind,” he argues.

However, Hudson notes that some innovations born of the Wait Times Strategy should be leveraged to improve wait times across the system. In particular, he points to the centralized system for hip and knee replacements used in the Toronto Central LHIN, where patients are assessed at a centralized facility by advance practice physiotherapists and nurses. These assessors determine whether a patient is a good candidate for surgery.

This system cuts down on wait times, because it frees up surgeons’ time by not having to see patients who are not good candidates for surgery. The centralized system also gives patients the option to either pick a specific surgeon or the first available surgeon, which further reduces overall wait times. (Patients report a high level of satisfaction with this system.)

Daniels believes a system like this could be of enormous benefit for many surgical procedures that were not included under the five priority areas.

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More bureaucratic decisions gone wrong. Why are bureaucrats making health care decisions?

Edited by Berton, Dec 11 2013, 10:04 AM.
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It is funny how all these stories come out and yet when you talk to individual Canadians none of them appear to have these issues. My mother waited 3 months for knee replacement & 1 day for hip replacement (she broke it). My grandaughter when she was injured in a car accident had a 7 man surgical team waiting for the heliocopter. I suspect like in most things, its the occasional screwup that gets all the press.

I went to see a guy yesteday who lives near here and has signed up for our Mexican Caravan. He is American and has immigrated to Canada. Why? For our medical.

As far as hips & knees, my wife had a 3 month wait time for her shoulder but decided to pay instead at private clinic. For the second opertion (same orthopedic surgeon) she waited 2 months but put it off herself since we were in Mexico. That particular surgeon (Peter Kokan) works 3 days at a private clinic, 2 days in the public system.
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