Canadians are still waiting to find out how long the government thinks they should wait for health care. Now that the government has determined how long the wait time should be for cardiac care, cancer care, orthopedic and cataract surgery - Canadians, unfortunately, are still waiting to find out how long the wait for diagnostic tests should be:
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.
Suspicious indeed. After all, if you've got to wait months to get an MRI to determine if you've got cancer - you're not yet officially waiting for cancer treatment. That wait doesn't begin until you know for sure that you have cancer.
21 Dec 2005 @ 7:43am