TORONTO - Ontario patients needing surgery that doesn't fall under five areas targeted by the government's wait times strategy are waiting even longer than before for operations, according to a survey by the Ontario Medical Association.
Operating room time and budgets are being devoted to cancer, cardiac and cataract surgeries and hip and knee replacements at the expense of other procedures, says a survey of 640 surgeons obtained by The Canadian Press.
The survey, set to be released Wednesday, found that 35 per cent of the doctors polled felt they were providing fewer services in areas outside the wait times strategy, while 20 per cent said services in the non-targeted areas were being "cannibalized" to meet the wait time goals.
"There is a real concern that timely care is being compromised for patients who do not fall into the areas targeted by the government," Dr. David Bach, OMA President, said in a release.
"Our survey of front-line doctors provides evidence that the current strategy is having unintended consequences."
One hundred per cent of specialists surveyed who perform cardiac surgery said they have had to adjust their practices to accommodate services targeted by the government wait times strategy.
The association said the most frequently mentioned services or surgeries that have been reduced because of the wait times strategy are breast biopsies, gall bladder surgery, hernias, and surgeries on elbows, feet, ankles, shoulders, spines and retinas.
The Canadian Medical Association released a similar survey last month in which they gave the battle to reduce wait times a marginal or failing grade, adding that the strategy was "ballooning" wait times for services not covered by the five priority areas.
The OMA is calling on the Ontario government to measure wait times for all surgical procedures, not just in the five areas targeted by the strategy.
The doctors also want the government to measure what it calls the "true" wait time, starting when a family doctor decides a patient needs to see a specialist instead of measuring from when the patients first sees a specialist.
That was a key recommendation from former Senator Michael Kirby's review of Ontario's wait times strategy.
The OMA said it is misleading to say a patient waited only 12 weeks for hip surgery if it took them 18 weeks to see the specialist in the first place.
A spokesman for Health Minister George Smitherman said there was no real evidence to support the anecdotal stories uncovered in the OMA's survey.
"It's not borne out by empirical evidence from the Canadian Institutes for Health Information,'' press secretary David Spencer said Tuesday. "Concerns about so-called cannibalization are not in fact borne out by what's happening out there in the field."
Premier Dalton McGuinty admitted recently that his government was hearing lots of stories that its strategy was compromising wait times in other areas, but dismissed them as anecdotal "with a capital A.''
Not only has the government not asked hospitals to take funding away from any one particular area, the government has specifically provided extra funding, McGuinty said.
