Wait Times for Some Procedures Growing

The Ontario Medical Association is reporting that Ontario's Wait Time Strategy is creating greater wait for some procedures. Not to put too fine a point on it but no kidding (insert sarcasm emoticon here). As the cataract lists drop to days my list for jaw corrective surgery, arthroscopy, etc... is up towards a year and patients are no longer referred to us. To be fair, our hospital is facing an anesthetist shortage so the problem is more than just the wait time strategy but the program ties the hands of the administration to a certain degree. The ICES report from 2007 reported that there seemed to be no adverse effect and wait times for surgeries in general were decreasing but it was early on in the strategy but as a posted back in March there are pockets where the strategy is making things worse. I still contend that any strategy is better than none at all, so hopefully the situation will improve soon.