Wait Time

When poet and essayist Kenneth Sherman was diagnosed with cancer, he began keeping a notebook of observations that blossomed into this powerful memoir. With incisive and evocative language, Sherman presents a clear-eyed view of what the cancer patient feels and thinks. His narrative voice is personal but not confessional, practical but not cold, thoughtful and searching but not self-pitying or self-absorbed. The author’s wait time for surgery on a malignant tumour was exceptionally long and riddled with bureaucratic bumbling; thus he asks our health-care providers and administrators if our system cannot be made efficient and more humane. While he is honest about what is good and bad in our system, he is not stridently political or given to directing blame. His narrative is interwoven with engaging ruminations on the meaning of illness in society, and is peppered with references to other writers’ thoughts on the subject. A widely published poet, Sherman helps the reader understand the deep connection between disease and creativity—the ways in which we write out of our suffering. Wait Time will be of special interest to anyone facing a serious illness as well as to health-care providers, social workers, and psychologists working in the field. Its thoughtful observations on health, life priorities, time, and mortality will make it of interest to all readers.

The report reviews a range of policies that countries have used to tackle waiting times for different services, including elective surgery and primary care consultations, but also cancer care and mental health services, with a focus on identifying the most successful ones.

When poet and essayist Kenneth Sherman was diagnosed with cancer, he began keeping a notebook of observations that blossomed into this powerful memoir. With incisive and evocative language, Sherman presents a clear-eyed view of what the cancer patient feels and thinks. His narrative voice is personal but not confessional, practical but not cold, thoughtful and searching but not self-pitying or self-absorbed. The author’s wait time for surgery on a malignant tumour was exceptionally long and riddled with bureaucratic bumbling; thus he asks our health-care providers and administrators if our system cannot be made efficient and more humane. While he is honest about what is good and bad in our system, he is not stridently political or given to directing blame. His narrative is interwoven with engaging ruminations on the meaning of illness in society, and is peppered with references to other writers’ thoughts on the subject. A widely published poet, Sherman helps the reader understand the deep connection between disease and creativity—the ways in which we write out of our suffering. Wait Time will be of special interest to anyone facing a serious illness as well as to health-care providers, social workers, and psychologists working in the field. Its thoughtful observations on health, life priorities, time, and mortality will make it of interest to all readers.

Public opinion polls in recent years show that Canadians are generally satisfied with their government-funded health care system. If there is any consistent source of dissatisfaction with the “single-payer” system, it is with the amount of time people wait to receive medical care. Requiring patients to queue for medical services presumably saves the government money, at least in the short-run, by reducing expenditures on hospitals and doctors. However, waiting lists impose monetary and non-monetary costs on those waiting for health care. The larger these costs, the more likely it is that waiting lists have net overall costs for Canadian society. What can and should be done to reduce or eliminate wait times for health care? Reducing Wait Times for Health Care: What Canada Can Learn from Theory and International Experience assesses various policy-related issues associated with waiting lists for health care services in Canada. First, Nadeem Esmail attempts to define what “waiting” for health care means and considers the complexities involved in comparing wait times from one country to another. In chapter 3, Dr. Brian Day examines the substantial costs that waiting for health care impose on Canadians. David Henderson then considers various policy approaches for reducing wait times in Canada, while in chapter 5, Steven Globerman addresses the labour market consequences of wait times and the broader impacts of wait times for Canada's economic growth. Finally, in chapter 6 of this volume, Nadeem Esmail reviews the international experience with wait times and reductions in wait times in an effort to identify policies that might work to improve the timeliness of access to health care in Canada. A key point for Canadian policymakers emerges from the chapters in this book: maintaining status quo health care policies is unlikely to improve the timeliness of the provision of health care services in Canada or improve the efficiency of the government-funded system.

Describes nine different teaching strategies which have been proven to have positive effects on student learning and explains how those strategies can be incorporated into the classroom.

Why some patients wait longer than others remains an important question. This book is a reference for health services researchers looking for statistical tools with which to study waiting times. The book offers detailed coverage of statistical concepts and methods for the analysis and interpretation of waiting-time data. It provides analysis from health services research perspective, rather than operations management, and contains a collection of examples.