Province releases surgical wait-time data

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This article was published 09/02/2024 (629 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba released updated surgical wait-time data Friday afternoon, after the opposition Progressive Conservatives called for timely statistics earlier in the day, questioning why the most recent available information was nearly six months old.

The timing of the wait-time data release is a coincidence, Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said, making an early announcement about the government’s plans to create a central, province wide wait list.

In a Friday-morning news conference Tory health critic Kathleen Cook accused the government of suppressing wait-time data.

The figures are now current up to December.

Heart surgery wait times have been cut in half, but there were no dramatic changes to waits for hip, knee or cataract surgeries over the past year, the data shows.

The median wait time — the number at which half of patients waited less time and half waited longer — for all cardiac surgeries in Manitoba was seven days in December, down from 17 days in December 2022. The last time the data was updated, in August, the median wait was 16 days.

For all hip and knee surgeries combined, the median wait time in December 2023 was 26 weeks, compared with 25 weeks in August and 28 weeks in December 2022.

Manitoba has seen a reduction in the wait time for cataract surgeries in recent years, but there wasn’t a big difference in Winnipeg over the past year. The median wait for cataract removal in the city was five to six weeks in December. The provincewide median wait time was, roughly, eight weeks.

Cook, the MLA for Roblin, issued a call Friday for the government to release wait-time data by next Friday, saying Manitobans deserve transparency. By Friday afternoon, the data was posted, and the time stamps on the spreadsheets indicate the province had compiled the data as of Jan. 28.

Calling it an “interesting coincidence,” Cook said she didn’t believe the data would have been posted Friday if she hadn’t called for it.

Asagwara took the opportunity to tease a centralized wait-time data system for all of Manitoba, saying it’s being developed with surgeons’ offices and health authorities. No timeline has been announced yet for its implementation.

And Asagwara took a swipe at Cook’s allegation, along with the work of the previous Tory government’s surgical and diagnostic task force, which sent patients out of the province to have some procedures done. The NDP ended the task force in the fall.

“I know the timing might seem interesting for folks. It is simply coincidental, but I’m more than happy to talk about our government’s efforts to strengthen public health care here at home to ensure that (Manitobans) can get surgeries and diagnostics in their own province and take an approach that prioritizes the people of this province, not a private company in America.”

The wait times were, until August, being tracked by the task force, which had also promised a centralized wait-time data collection system that never materialized.

The Tories have been critical of the NDP government’s decision to shut down the task force without another plan in place.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca