Surgical waitlists in Canada cost patients more than $1 billion in lost time
Calgary, AB—Lengthy waits for surgery cost Canadian patients a combined $1.08 billion in lost time and productivity in 2011, concludes a new report from the Fraser Institute, Canada’s leading public policy think-tank.
The report calculates the average value of time lost during the work week at $1,144 for each of the estimated 941,321 Canadians waiting for treatment in 2011.
When considering hours outside the work week, including evenings and weekends but excluding eight hours of sleep per night, the estimated cost of waiting jumps to almost $3.29 billion, or about $3,490 per patient.
"Patients waiting for surgery suffer both physically and emotionally, which diminishes their ability to participate fully in their lives both at work and at home," said Nadeem Esmail, Fraser Institute senior fellow and author of The Private Cost of Public Queues.
The report uses data from the Fraser Institute’s annual survey of hospital wait times, which found that Canadians waited 9.5 weeks, on average, from an appointment with a specialist to receiving treatment in 2011, up slightly from 9.3 weeks in 2010. Across all provinces and medical specialties, the report estimates that Canadian patients waited a combined 11.8 million weeks for treatment in 2011.
The report notes the true private cost of waiting for medical care in Canada is likely higher than $1.08 billion in 2011, or $3.29 billion over the same period when hours outside the work week are included. Importantly, neither estimate includes the cost of care provided by family members and any reductions in their productivity due to worry and grief. Non-monetary medical costs such as increased risk of mortality or adverse events that result directly from long delays for treatment are also not included in the estimates. Finally, the estimates consider only waits from specialist to treatment and do not capture the private cost of waiting for either diagnostic scans such as CT or MRI, or for an appointment with a specialist.
"Canadians endure some of the longest waits for medically necessary treatment in the developed world," Esmail said.
"Rationing of health care in Canada not only deprives patients of timely access to medically necessary treatment, it also causes them to lose out on wages, productivity, and enjoyment of life while they wait."
_________________________________________
Republished with permission from The Fraser Institute
Source article is located here.
About The Fraser Institute
The Fraser Institute is an independent non-partisan research and educational organization based in Canada. The Fraser Institute publishes peer-reviewed research into critical economic and public policy issues including taxation, government spending, health care, school performance, and trade.
More info
Email to a friend
Print version
Plain textGet News & Blogs Updated In Real Time Via Twitter
We are booked to have surgery in the US. we have to pay for this out of our pocket ($21,000us) but that is what we are willing to do.
My husbnads quality of life is sinking quickly and no one here seems to care..... oh wait! yes they do they have given him oodles of prescriptions for percocet and antidepressants!!!! (which he has not filled to this date)
gotta love the canadian health care system
Be careful of the terms – they were very specific. The 9.5 weeks refers to receiving “treatmentâ€. Second, the "medically necessary care" term has to be scrutinized. The author dared to throw in plastic surgery which has a 21.8 week wait time. This, and other non-urgent care or surgeries artificially boosted the median number significantly to 9.5 weeks. Did he mention that?
Let’s look at surgeries for: cancer (2.0 weeks), and cardiovascular (1.2 weeks).
Third, the 9.5 weeks was not the average but the “median†(if that number is even correct). Again, most of the wait times refer to non-life threatening surgeries.
In B.C. five projects in have been profiled, including the Joint Replacement Access Clinic (JRAC) at Lions Gate Hospital in North Vancouver, where waits for the first surgical consult have dropped from almost a year to between two and four weeks. The median waiting time for general surgery was 3.1 weeks. Interesting that the report does not refer to these...
It should be noted that Canada’s spending, by proportion is ½ that of the U.S., for similar outcomes. By his own admission, per the Fraser Institute’s website, at least 5 other countries that Universal Healthcare are more expensive, for example:
“Canadians fund the developed world’s fifth most expensive universal access health insurance system. According to the most recent apple-to-apple statistics available, only the Netherlands, France, Germany, and Denmark spent more on their universal health insurance system as a share of GDP (while Switzerland spent as much as Canada).â€
I encourage readers to re-read the following link and then compare it to other sites such as the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. http://www.fraserinstitute.org/uploadedFiles/fraser-ca/Content/research-news/research/publications/private-cost-of-public-queues-2012.pdf vs. http://www.policyalternatives.ca/newsroom/news-releases/canadas-public-health-care-system-holds-answers-surgery-wait-times
Oh. That makes it much better.
Post your comment