More work needed on wait times

Wed, 2006-11-29 19:34.

Kate Stockmann

Mark Carcasole (CFRB News) - According to a new report card released by the Wait Time Alliance, progress has been made on reducing wait times for various treatments around Canada over the last couple years, but much more still needs to be done. Representatives from the WTA, as well as the Canadian Medical Association spoke to a number of medical professionals at the National Club downtown Wednesday about the findings in their new report card. It's meant to gauge progress made around the country since the "10-Year Plan to Strengthen Health Care" was created in 2004.

CMA President Dr. Colin McMillan says overall, the grades aren't bad, but they're not great either, "there are encouraging examples of reductions (in wait times). But...all to often, these are isolated, too infrequent, and too unrepeated across the country. In short...governments are showing promise, but as a country we're not there yet."

Canada gets an A for funding, a B for "establishing wait-time benchmarks", a C for providing information to the public, and a D for "establishing a time table to achieve (targets)." It's also marked "incomplete" when it comes to creating meaningful reductions in wait times.

Individual provinces were graded on their work to decrease wait times in five priority areas, and Ontario is one of the top-rated ones. We scored Cs in CT scans and MRIs, radiation treatment, and cataract surgery, with a B in hip and knee replacements, and an A in cardiac bypass surgery.

Meanwhile, many other provinces didn't fare nearly as well. WTA co-chair, Dr. Lorne Bellan says it's not a matter of certain provinces losing ground, "it's just that some provinces haven't pulled up their socks and haven't caught up to other provinces."

McMillan says the CMA is making four suggestions: creating a countrywide health workforce strategy, sharing successes between provinces, making more and better benchmarks, and creating a "care guarantee".

The idea with the last suggestion would be for the government to guarantee a specific wait time for a treatment, and if a patient's wait exceeds that, money would be used from a publicly-funded reserve to pay for that patient's transportation to get treated in another province.

For a look at the Wait Time Alliance's report card, you can log onto their website at http://www.waittimealliance.ca .