winnipegsun.com - Editorial - We're still waiting: "Suspiciously, no benchmarks were provided for the fifth area the feds and provinces agreed to target -- access to diagnostic tests such as CAT scans and MRIs.
This is particularly disturbing because CAT scans and MRIs are vital diagnostic tools for three of the four other areas targeted for wait times reduction -- cancer treatment, cardiac disease and hip and knee replacements.
Thus, setting benchmarks for how long it should take to treat a patient after he or she is diagnosed is meaningless if the diagnosis is unduly delayed in the first place because the patient had to wait too long for a CAT scan or MRI.
Doctors have also warned that as the provinces shift around budgets to meet demands for improvement in these five targeted areas, wait times for other procedures will inevitably start to grow as they are starved for funding.
Our concern is that this so-called strategy to reduce wait times is starting to look more and more like a strategy to look busy while failing to reduce wait times. And that federal and provincial politicians will again do what they always do when it all falls apart: blame each other. "
No comments:
Post a Comment