While the Ontario government says hospital wait times continue to improve across the province, Thunder Bay still has some catching up to do.
Rhonda Crocker-Ellacott says Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre officials have made improvements a priority and results have shown they are making headway cutting wait times for a variety of medical procedures.
The hospital's executive vice-president for patient services and chief nursing executive said it's tough to tell sometimes looking at a single set of statistics, with no prior data to compare it against.
"We've seen dramatic improvements across the board," she said. "Cataract (surgery) is a good example to follow. Back several months or a year ago, we used to see our cataract wait times well over 182 days and with targeted funding, additional operating room capacity, what we were able to do is bring it down to well below target.
"We've seen that in many areas. Cancer surgery we've always done very well, because we're making a concerted effort to make sure we're meeting cancer wait times for our patients."
Some delays are simply out of the hospital's control, Crocker-Ellacott added, pointing to magnetic resonance imaging. In Thunder Bay a patient must wait an average of 92 days for an MRI, compared to 59 province-wide. Both figures are well off the 28-day target set by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care.
"In MRI and CT (scanning), we actually have a six to nine per cent no-show volume. We're actually trying to make some improvements around voice calling to patients, to remind them that they have an appointment, for example, versus just the letter they see in the mail," Crocker-Ellacott said. "So we're doing things there. In addtion ... although we have about 600 total joint (procedures) done annually, we're still seeing with our aging population demographic there is an opportunity for more funding that will allow us to do more joints."
The province, which controls the hospital purse strings, has significantly lessened the MRI pot, which is further exacerbating the problem, she added.
It's a mixed bag for the city when the numbers are analyzed.
For knee surgery the province has set a 182-day wait time, three weeks less than it takes to have the operation performed in Thunder Bay. The provincial average is 145 days.
Angioplasties at Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre take 22 days from recommendation to procedure, a full week longer than the provincial average.
The news isn’t all bad for local residents in need of medical care.
Though the wait for a child to have an ear, nose or throat surgery in Thunder Bay is 160 days, 24 more than the provincial average, the number beats the provincial target by 22 days.
Eye surgeries generally take 139 days to occur, 12 days fewer than Ontario as a whole and 43 days less than the provincial standard.
The statistics cover the period from April to June this year.
