Thursday, June 29, 2006

Continued progress

The Saskatchewan Surgical Care Network has released its statistics for 2005-06...and while there's still work to be done in reducing waitlists, there's no doubt that reinvestment in the public health-care system is leading to substantially improved results:
The Department of Health entity that monitors wait times released numbers Wednesday on its Web site (www.sasksurgery.ca) revealing that Regina Qu'Appelle and Saskatoon Health Regions combined to complete about 2,000 more surgeries in 2005-06 than the previous year.

The statistics also showed a 1,600-patient reduction on those waiting for surgeries...

The median wait time for all surgeries in the seven major districts is 4.4 weeks, although it's 12.9 weeks for some procedures like ophthalmology. However, for non-emergency surgeries it's 7.4 weeks with orthopedic surgeries still taking an average 18 weeks.

Weiler said in an interview that the success story in the numbers is the new tools that are helping fine-tune the management of Saskatchewan's surgical care system so that less people have to wait for so long.
Of course there's still a need to keep an eye out for ways to further improve care management...and of course the current management is still working its way through the existing waitlists. But there can be no doubt that the current strategy is making huge strides in the right direction. Which makes now the time to keep going in that direction - not to assume that the public sector can't take health care any further than it has.

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