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Patients wait 249 days to see bowel specialist

Lives may be on the line, national group claims

By: Larry Kusch

Wednesday, Jun. 20, 2012 at 8:19 AM | Comments: 0

A national health-care group says Manitobans are waiting far too long for a diagnosis of symptoms of bowel disease -- to the point lives may be at risk.

The Canadian Association of Gastroenterology said patients with digestive diseases suffer long waits across the country. On average, wait times are 30 days longer today than they were in 2005.

The association published the results Tuesday of a national survey of 200 gastroenterologists, including 11 from Manitoba. Each specialist reported on the wait times of 10 patients over the course of one week in April.

The survey found it took, on average, 161 days in Canada for patients to see a specialist or receive treatment from the date they had been referred by a family doctor. In Manitoba, the average was 249 days. (A similar study in 2008 recorded average waits of 155 days for Canada and 258 days in Manitoba.)

In the case of patients who went to their GP complaining of rectal bleeding, the average wait for a consultation with a gastroenterologist was 82 days in Canada -- and 143 days in Manitoba, the survey found.

Dr. Desmond Leddin, a gastroenterology association spokesman and professor of medicine at Dalhousie University in Halifax, said rectal bleeding does not always signify a serious problem, but it can be a sign of bowel cancer.

"It really is something that needs to be seen in a reasonable fashion," he said. He said the national wait time is too high, let alone Manitoba's.

"You're going to miss cancers. There will be delayed diagnosis and adverse outcomes because of it," Leddin said.

Health Minister Theresa Oswald said she had not seen the results of the survey. It was released on the same day as a national study by the Wait Time Alliance, which monitors provincial performance in a number of areas of medicine.

"Certainly we don't want anybody waiting unduly long," she said, when told of the gastroenterology report. She said she would look into it, adding it was difficult for her to comment on a study without reading it and reviewing its methodology.

Manitoba does not track wait times for patients of gastroenterologists. Oswald said the province has not ignored the specialty, establishing Canada's first colorectal-cancer screening program, which has been successful in catching colon cancer early.

She said the province is also establishing a central intake system to ensure patients needing colonoscopies are seen as efficiently as possible.

Meanwhile, the Wait Time Alliance national report card, released Tuesday, gave Manitoba an 'A' for meeting medical benchmark wait times for both heart surgery and radiation therapy.

However, the province continued to do poorly in meeting national standards for performing hip and knee replacements and cataract surgery in a timely manner. The alliance gave the province a 'D' in all three categories. That compares with national scores of 'B' and 'C' for hip and knee replacements respectively and 'B' for cataract surgery.

The alliance reported Manitoba's wait times increased for joint replacements, cataract surgery and even radiation therapy in the past year.

Conservative critic Reg Helwer said the wait times report is an indictment of the NDP's performance in health care.

"(Oswald's) spending more and more money all the way along and we're not getting results," he said.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca

Comparing treatment times

HOW Manitoba stacks up against its Prairie neighbours and the national average on wait times.

CategoryMan. Sask. Alta.Canada

Hip replacementDCBB

Knee replacementDDCC

Radiation therapyAAAA

Cataract surgeryDCBB

Heart surgeryAAAA

-- source: Wait Times Alliance report card

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