A report released this week indicates that 98% of Canadians begin radiation therapy for cancer within four weeks after the patients are ready to receive the treatment, meeting nationally accepted standards. Meanwhile, wait times for imaging procedures varied greatly by province, although the report did not produce a national average.
The national radiation therapy wait times are far better than those for other medical procedures in Canada, such as the average 78% compliance rate with guidelines for hip-fracture repair, which has a maximum wait time of two days, or the 79% compliance rate with knee replacement guidelines, which has a wait time of up to 26 weeks.
The information is contained in a report by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), "Wait Times in Canada -- A Comparison by Province, 2011," which was released on March 21.
The CIHI report provides a single, pan-Canadian average for compliance with wait-time benchmarks in several priority areas: hip replacements, knee replacements, surgical repair of hip fracture, surgical removal of cataracts, cardiac bypass surgery, and cancer radiation therapy. Among Canadian provinces, Manitoba has the highest compliance rate with the four-week benchmark for radiation therapy, at 100%, while Nova Scotia has the lowest, at 85%.
Currently, there is neither a consensus on benchmarks for diagnostic imaging nor universal collection of information on MRI and CT wait times, but imaging wait-time data from six provinces are contained in the 2011 report. The average wait time for CT scans ranges from seven days in Ontario to 22 days in Saskatchewan. The average wait time for MRI exams ranges from 31 days in Saskatchewan to 77 days in Prince Edward Island.
It's not surprising that the radiation therapy wait-time benchmark has a high compliance rate, said Tracy Johnson, manager of special projects and emerging issues at CIHI. The first report was produced in 2006 after the heads of each province in Canada committed to improving wait times in priority areas.
"Radiation isn't something that's elective, it's an urgent-care matter," Johnson said. "In fact, one of the incentives for developing the wait-times benchmarks was media reports of people having to go to the U.S. for their cancer care [because of long waits in Canada]."
Benchmarking of wait times for MRI or CT scans is the least developed among the priority areas.
"In 2004, when heads of provinces first looked at benchmarks, there just wasn't enough evidence to set benchmarks for CT and MRI scans, and that evidence base is still being created," Johnson noted. "Also, it is harder to collect CT and MRI scan data than surgical or radiation-treatment data both because some diagnostic imaging is hospital-based and some of it is free-standing-clinic-based, and also because there are so many of the images taken every day."
Data for the reports come from surveys conducted by Statistics Canada and the Fraser Institute. The 2011 report can be accessed by clicking here.
