Wait times costing Albertans, Canadians big bucks
Posted Jul 14, 2015 7:18 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Canadians lost $1.2-billion in income and productivity last year because of long waits for surgeries and medical treatments, according to a new report by the Fraser Institute.
The survey also found Albertans face the second highest cost of waiting for care, at an average value of $1,848 per person per work week.
Bacchus Barua, Senior Economist with the Fraser Institute says while Albertans do have some of the highest wages in the country, there’s another reason we’re so high on the list.
“Albertans face a wait time of about 13.4 weeks between a specialist and treatment, this is quite a bit larger than the 10.5 week wait that Albertans faced in 2013,” he said.
The personal cost of long wait times was highest in Nova Scotia at $2,081.
Bacchus says this is having serious consequences on patients.
“They’re not just benign inconveniences for Canadians. Some of them are able to wait, that is true, but for many of the patients they might be in pain, they might not be able to work properly, they may not be able to take leisure time for their family,” he said.
Bacchus says if we extrapolate the cost of waiting outside the work week, the total figure lost for Canadians last year was $3.7-billion.
