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Surgical Wait Times

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Understanding the Wait Time Process

Your wait time begins when you first experience symptoms and seek medical assistance and ends when your surgery has been performed. There are many components to wait time:

In New Brunswick, surgical wait time begins when you and your surgeon determine you need surgery and the booking request is received at the hospital. The wait time ends when your surgery is performed.

What are wait times and why do they exist?

Waiting happens when the demand for a service cannot be met immediately. The need for services is increasing as the population ages and requires more care, diagnostic tests improve, and advances in technology make more conditions treatable. Demand also increases if access to services is not appropriately organized, and if there is a shortage of resources such as health care providers, equipment and operating funds. Patients may wait at several points along the path of care, including waiting for a primary health care provider, a diagnostic test, a surgeon, surgery, rehabilitation, discharge to the community, and home care.

The length of time a patient waits can be influenced by a number of factors. Patients with illnesses that are not considered life threatening may wait longer when emergency cases arise. Long waits for certain surgeons may also occur if they get more referrals (e.g., family doctors may refer to one surgeon more frequently). Patients and referring family doctors may not be aware of surgeons with shorter waiting lists because this information was not routinely collected and shared.

Waiting for surgery becomes a cause for concern if waiting goes beyond a clinically appropriate amount of time and starts to affect a person’s health, social and economic well being.

Surgical Wait Time Targets

When a surgeon and the patient determine that surgery is required and the patient is ready for surgery, a surgical prioritization form is filled out. This helps determine a recommended timeframe in which the surgery is to be completed. The surgery will fall into one of 4 categories: