Category: US/World Health Care Comparisons

The Doctor Will See You—In Three Months: “It’s not just broken for breast exams. If you find a suspicious-looking mole and want to see a dermatologist, you can expect an average wait of 38 days in the U.S., and up to 73 days if you live in Boston, according to researchers at the University of California at San Francisco who studied the matter. Got a knee injury? A 2004 survey by medical recruitment firm Merritt, Hawkins & Associates found the average time needed to see an orthopedic surgeon ranges from 8 days in Atlanta to 43 days in Los Angeles. Nationwide, the average is 17 days. ‘Waiting is definitely a problem in the U.S., especially for basic care,’ says Karen Davis, president of the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund, which studies health-care policy. All this time spent ‘queuing,’ as other nations call it, stems from too much demand and too little supply. Only one-third of U.S. doctors are general practitioners, compared with half in most European countries. On top of that, only 40% of U.S. doctors have arrangements for after-hours care, vs. 75% in the rest of the industrialized world. Consequently, some 26% of U.S. adults in one survey went to an emergency room in the past two years because they couldn’t get in to see their regular doctor, a significantly higher rate than in other countries.”

Waiting Times for Care? Try Looking at the U.S. – Nurses, Doctors Say It’s Time to Debunk the Myths: “‘There’s been a lot of clamor lately about delays in care in some other countries. But if you want to see some really unsightly waiting times, look at U.S. medical facilities,’ said Deborah Burger, RN, president of the 75,000-member CNA/NNOC. While the problem has been largely overlooked by the major media, it was quietly exposed by the chief medical officer of Aetna, Inc. late in Aetna’s Investor Conference 2007 in March. In his talk, Troy Brennan conceded that ‘the (U.S.) healthcare system is not timely.’ He cited ‘recent statistics from the Institution of Healthcare Improvement… that people are waiting an average of about 70 days to try to see a provider. And in many circumstances people initially diagnosed with cancer are waiting over a month, which is intolerable,’ Brennan said. Brennan also recalled that he had formerly spent much of his time as an administrator and head of a physicians’ organization trying ‘to find appointments for people with doctors.’ While Brennan’s “

Angry Bear:

“The data shows that many countries with ‘nationalized’ health care systems have little or no waits for elective medical procedures. A 2003 OECD working paper entitled ‘Explaining Waiting Times Variations for Elective Surgery across OECD Countries’ by Luigi Siciliani and Jeremy Hurst provides some survey evidence of actual waiting times in various OECD countries. The results of that survey are presented below.”

Two nice tables here explain a lot…