Time Flies for Canadians Joint Surgery Patients

The wait time for joint replacement surgery at The Ottawa Hospital in Canada is not long—it just seems that way. Or it is not as long as the provincial numbers suggest, says the hospital’s chief of orthopedic surgery.

The reason the numbers look as bad as they do is many patients insist on waiting for the surgeon of their choice, said Geoff Dervin, M.D., in an interview with Don Butler of the Ottawa Citizen. For the June-to-August period of 2013, the wait-time number for hip replacements at The Ottawa Hospital was 411 days. For knee replacements, it was 333.

Dervin agreed that, “Accessibility is a key aspect of quality care. There’s no question about it.” But he noted that the way the province measures wait times makes the situation look worse than it really is. The numbers, Dervin said, mean that 9 out of 10 patients have their surgery within those time frames. This year the median wait for hip-replacement surgery at the Ottawa Hospital was 232 days, he said. For knee replacements, it was 148 days. The provincial target for both surgeries is 182 days. “The majority are being done on time, ” he insisted.

Wait times at The Ottawa Hospital are skewed, Dervin said, because some of the eight orthopedic surgeons have exceptionally long wait lists. The same surgeons do revision operations and spend some of their time teaching surgical residents.

Nevertheless, waits for both surgeries at The Ottawa Hospital are still far longer than at other Ottawa hospitals. One, (The Queensway-Carleton) completes 90% of its hip replacements within 135 days and another (The Montfort) in 167 days.