Wait times for hip surgeries fell by more than 100 days and knee surgery waits dropped 53 days at London hospitals in October and November, provincial statistics show.
Patients also waited shorter periods for cataract surgery in London, and the city had some of the shortest waits in Ontario for a number of cancer procedures.
“We hope it is a trend,” said Sandra Letton, vice-president of acute/ambulatory care at St. Joseph’s Health Care.
In its strategy to reduce wait times, the Ontario government last year started posting data collected from hospitals on the Health Ministry website. This week’s set of figures were the third released, covering cancer surgeries, cardiac procedures, cataract operations, diagnostic scans and hip and knee replacements.
The wait times measure the period from when a patient and surgeon decide to go ahead with a procedure until it is done. Not included is the often lengthy wait from when a family doctor refers a patient to a specialist until they are seen.
Vince Rice, a spokesperson with the government’s health results team, said more time will be required to know if the wait times situation is improving across Ontario.
“We basically feel it is too early to determine a trend,” he said.
When the first figures were released for July last year, London patients had some of the longest waits in Ontario for hip and knee replacement operations.
The figures covering October and November pegged the average wait time at London Health Sciences Centre for a total hip replacement at 143 days, down from 252 days in August and September. That was better than the average wait time of 150 days for the province.
The wait for knee replacements dropped to 231 from 284 days, but remained above the Ontario average of 203.
Bernadette MacDonald, vice-president of surgery at LHSC, said the hospital is trying to increase the volume of procedures identified in the province’s wait times strategy.
“It is showing improvement,” Macdonald said, but added the statistics only cover people who have been operated on in a two-month period.
“I think we will have to watch it over time,” she said.
London also had one of the longest wait times for cataract surgery at 216 days last July. For the October-November period, the wait was down to 196 days, still well above the Ontario average of 138 days.
London and area hospitals also had some of the shortest wait times in Ontario for a number of procedures.
- St. Thomas-Elgin General Hospital had the third shortest median wait time for knee replacements at 60 days and the fifth shortest for hip replacement at 57 days.
- Chatham Public General Hospital had the fourth shortest wait for cataract surgery with a median wait of 27 days compared to the Ontario average of 93 days.
- The median wait for CT scans at London Health Sciences Centre was five days, the third shortest in Ontario.
- St. Joseph’s Health Care had the fourth shortest wait in Ontario for breast cancer surgery at 11 days compared with the Ontario average of 16 days.
- LHSC had the shortest wait in Ontario for lung and esophageal cancers at six days compared with the average of 15 days.
- Stratford General Hospital has the shortest wait in the province for colon and stomach cancers at eight days compared with the provincial median wait of 18 days.
- LHSC had the shortest wait in Ontario for brain and central nervous system cancers at four days, half the provincial median wait of eight days.
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