Waiting Times For Health Services

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.

This book provides a framework to understand why there are waiting lists for elective surgery in some OECD countries and not in others. It also describes how waiting times are measured in OECD countries and reviews different policy approaches to tackling excessive waiting times.

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.

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.

Long waiting times for health services is an important policy issue in most OECD countries. Reducing the time that people have to wait to get a consultation with a general practitioner, or a diagnostic test or treatment, can go a long way in improving patient experience and avoiding possible deterioration in their health. Governments in many countries have taken various measures to reduce waiting times, often supported by additional funding, with mixed success. This report looks at how waiting times for elective treatment, which is usually the longest wait, have stalled over the past decade in many countries, and have started to rise again in some others. It also analyses the differences in how long people have to wait to get a consultation with general practitioners or specialists across countries. 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.

Second in a series of publications from the Institute of Medicine's Quality of Health Care in America project Today's health care providers have more research findings and more technology available to them than ever before. Yet recent reports have raised serious doubts about the quality of health care in America. Crossing the Quality Chasm makes an urgent call for fundamental change to close the quality gap. This book recommends a sweeping redesign of the American health care system and provides overarching principles for specific direction for policymakers, health care leaders, clinicians, regulators, purchasers, and others. In this comprehensive volume the committee offers: A set of performance expectations for the 21st century health care system. A set of 10 new rules to guide patient-clinician relationships. A suggested organizing framework to better align the incentives inherent in payment and accountability with improvements in quality. Key steps to promote evidence-based practice and strengthen clinical information systems. Analyzing health care organizations as complex systems, Crossing the Quality Chasm also documents the causes of the quality gap, identifies current practices that impede quality care, and explores how systems approaches can be used to implement change.