There was a wait-list of 11 cases, as of Oct. 31, at Royal Columbian Hospital, according to a new website set up by the Ministry of Health.
Dr. Navraj Singh Heran is the surgeon at the hospital with the least amount of wait-listed cases, at five.
Royal Columbian Hospital had one of the shortest wait-lists in the Fraser Health region. Only Chilliwack General Hospital, at eight cases, and Delta Hospital, at five, were lower.
The province's new surgical wait times website - www.health.gov.bc.ca/swt/ - gives patients the tools to make informed decisions about surgery waits, while helping to reduce overall wait times, Kevin Falcon, minister of health services, said in a press release.
"We've been recognized by groups like the Canadian Institute for Health Information and the Wait Times Alliance as leaders in Canada in reducing surgical waits for key priority areas," Falcon said. "The new wait times website will build on our success, giving patients more control over their surgical options by letting them see and compare surgery wait times from every hospital across British Columbia."
The website opens on the image of a human body. Click on parts of the body to choose a procedure. Designed to be more interactive and easier to use, the new website allows the public to search using the body image, a map of the province or a dropdown menu.
Once a procedure is picked, the patient can narrow his or her search by health authority, hospital and specialist.
It is more comprehensive than the previous wait time site, which reported only information from larger facilities that performed more than 1,000 surgeries each year, leaving out smaller, regional facilities.
With the new site, the public can search through 80 adult elective surgical groups performed at any public facility, by any surgeon in any part of the province.
This new site gives British Columbians access to more surgical procedures and more information than any other provincial surgical wait times site in Canada, according to the press release.
"This new website will allow physicians to work collaboratively with their patients and ensure that they get the most timely, appropriate surgical care possible," Dr. Andy Hamilton, co-chair of the Provincial Surgical Advisory Council and program medical director of surgical services for Interior Health, said.
The information found on the website encourages patients to discuss wait times with general practitioners, to determine if there's a faster or more appropriate treatment available, according to the provincial press release.
The website uses information gathered in the new Surgical Patient Registry, a provincial database that captures comprehensive, up-to-date information on all patients waiting for elective surgeries in B.C.
The new database and website also allow health authorities and the province to pinpoint where the longer waits are, in order to make better decisions about funding and surgical resource allocation.
"The new wait times website and Surgical Patient Registry are innovations in the health-care system, which will help us identify key surgical areas we need to focus on," Falcon said.
Each night, hospitals across the province send updated wait list information to the Surgical Patient Registry database, and the website is updated monthly with the new data.
This allows more timely information for the public, health authorities, government and doctors to make decisions about surgery waits, the press release said.
Reports prepared by the Surgical Patient Registry for health authorities and surgeons will flag lengthening wait lists, as well as people who have waited the longest or who are in the greatest need.
The wait times website is part of the province's strategy to improve surgical access and reduce wait times.
B.C. leads Canada in exceeding the benchmarks for all priority areas: cancer treatment, cardiac care, sight restoration and joint replacement, according to the report Wait Times Tables - A Comparison by Province, 2010 by the Canadian Institute for Health Information.
That report echoed the 2009 Wait Times Alliance report, in which only B.C. and Ontario received an A in every category - radiology, hip, knees, cardiac and sight - when it came to meeting wait times benchmarks. The Surgical Patient Registry and new wait times website was developed by the Ministry of Health Services, health authorities and surgeons as a key innovation in our provincial wait times management strategy and the eHealth strategy, the release said.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Janaya Fuller-Evans
Quelle/Source: The Record, 20.11.2010
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