April Davie lives in constant pain, but waiting for orthopaedic surgery has been even more excruciating.
“It’s really hard. It’s like you don’t matter,” she said.
After injuring her elbow in a car accident, Davie says she’s been told to undergo surgery for a painful ulner nerve entrapment. In the last 18 months, she’s been bounced between four separate orthopaedic surgeons. One closed their Abbotsford practice, another retired before setting a surgery date. Others are too busy to return her calls.
“I just want to know, am I going to have surgery?” Davie asked.
The reality is medical wait times in Canada are only getting worse. British Columbia has seen the average time from referral to treatment increase for a third year in a row.
“We aren’t really doing anything different,” said Bacchus Barua, senior economist for the Fraser Institute. “You can’t expect to do the same thing and get any sort of different result.”
Extended: B.C. woman shares struggle to get medical care after car accident
The think tank and the Wait Time Alliance each released reports that highlight the growing wait times across the country.
“Billions of dollars went into managing wait times and people are wondering where the money went,” said Dr. Chris Simpson of the Wait Time Alliance.
Simpson says with the fifth most expensive health care system in the world, Canada doesn’t necessarily need to spend more to bring wait times down. Instead, he says the funding model needs to reflect the number of procedures being done.
Dr. Les Vertesi, a health care wait time expert, says the current model, which focuses only on staying under budget, needs to change.
“At the beginning of the year in order to make sure they don’t run over, they’re putting the brakes on,” said Dr. Vertesi.
“They’re running the whole year with the brakes on.”
Davie says she’s most likely going to be referred to a fifth orthopaedic surgeon and is preparing herself to wait for six months to a year.
“It’s getting hard to believe in the ideals we once held so dear to us,” she said. “That we cared for each other, not just the almighty dollar.”
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