Hospital wait times cost Canadians almost $1 billion a year: report

It's been said that surgery wait times are a good way of gauging the health of a public healthcare system.

If that's the case, maybe our system isn't so healthy.

Last December, the Fraser Institute released their 22nd annual wait list survey claiming that the average wait time for surgeries in Canada was 17.7 weeks (An 8.5 week wait from GP to specialist plus a 9.3 week wait from specialist to treatment). While that was a slight improvement from 2011, it was a whopping 91 per cent increase from 1993.

On Thursday, the public policy think-tank released a new report to actually quantify the value of time and productivity lost. The total cost — derived using the average value of time lost during the work week for each of the estimated 870,462 patients waiting for surgery last year — equals $982 million.

"Canadians face some of the longest waits for health care in the developed world. This creates unnecessary pain and suffering for patients and their families and reduces their ability to participate fully in their lives,” Nadeem Esmail, Fraser Institute director of health policy studies and author of the study, said in a press release.

"Protracted waits for health care deprive Canadians of wages, productivity, and enjoyment of life.

"Canada should embrace sensible health policy reforms based on the successes of countries like Switzerland, Japan, and the Netherlands, all of which provide high-quality, and prompt health care regardless of patients’ ability to pay."

[ Related: Seniors unprepared for healthcare costs ]

The Fraser Institute isn't the only organization raising alarm bells about wait times.

According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information provinces are trying but not achieving wait time targets.

"In 2004, first ministers identified wait time reduction as a top priority in the 10-Year Plan to Strengthen Health Care. The plan established strategic investments in five priority clinical areas: cancer, heart, diagnostic imaging, joint replacement and sight restoration," states the CIHI annual report released in February.

"In the early years of the plan, substantial reductions in wait times were observed. However, in more recent years, progress has slowed, as provinces appear to have more difficulty achieving gains as they approach the targets."

The CIHI report also cites a 2010 Commonwealth Fund Survey of 11 countries which highlights Canada's poor world-wide ranking.

Organizations, like the Fraser Institute, have in the past advocated for more private options as an enhancement to our public healthcare system as a means to alleviate long wait times.

[ Related: Statement from the Canadian Medical Association welcoming new Health Minister ]

Others, of course, are looking to strengthen the public system without more private services.

The Council of Canadians, for example, are part of a group organizing a rally of "health care allies" at the premiers' conference next week at Niagara-on-the-Lake. They're hoping that the premiers will "stand up to [Prime Minister] Harper and demand a 2014 Health Accord."

With an aging population and inflationary pressures leading to longer wait times, this is a debate that's not going away.

(Photo courtesy of Reuters)

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