Excessive wait times for medically necessary surgery and treatment cost close to $3.6 billion in lost wages and productivity in 2022, according to a new research report by the Fraser Institute, a non-partisan think tank.
Backlog
The data for the report came from the Fraser Institute’s yearly survey of Canadian physicians to calculate the median waiting time for patients across the country.The report does not include the additional 12.6-week wait before seeing a specialist after a referral from a family doctor, it notes.
Added together, 12.6 weeks between general practitioner referral and specialist visit, plus 14.8 weeks between specialist visit to treatment date, the total median wait time in Canada for medical treatment was over 27 weeks in 2022, the longest wait time in the history of the annual report.
The authors note that COVID-19 had a potential impact on wait times and the number of procedures performed in hospitals, which might account for the longer total wait time of 27.4 weeks in 2022 compared to 25.6 weeks in 2021.
This estimate only counts costs borne by the person waiting for treatment, the report said. It doesn’t attempt to place a value on costs borne by family members caring for the individual waiting for treatment, such as their lost productivity due to difficulty or mental anguish.
Also not included in the estimate are non-monetary medical costs, such as increased risk of mortality or adverse events that result directly from long delays for treatment.