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Has shown that despite best efforts to reduce the time that patients have to wait to undergo an operation, the situation is actually worse than it was before.
Regional governments have been pumping money into the system and have even put in place special plans to cut down on operation waiting time for patients, but apparently to no avail.
The fact that the number of people served by the National Health System has also been reduced by half a million residents since 2012 doesn’t seem to have made any difference either.
The average amount of time that a patient currently has to wait to receive a surgical operation on the NHS reached 89 daysat the end of December last year. This is two days more than last year, and 13 more than in June 2012.
And the waiting time for a surgical operation in Spain varies according to which autonomous region we are talking about. For example, those living in the Canary Islands are likely to have to wait for an average of 175.9 days; those in Asturias orExtremadura will be operated on after around 144 days of waiting and residents in the Valencia Region will be called for their operation after approximately 120 days.
In total, there are 549,424 patients currently waiting for a non-urgent procedure with one of the 14 different speciality departments. This is 37,501 more than in December 2014 and 12,513 more than in June 2012.
Patients waiting for a neuro-surgical-type operation will have to wait the longest, at 160 days. This is followed by 135 days forPlastic Surgery and 112 for Traumatology.
With the exception of cataract removal and hip replacement operations, where the waiting time has been reduced, for all other types of procedures, patients now have to wait significantly longer than before.
On a more positive note, patients wanting to see a specialist doctor now only have to wait around 58 days, as this has been reduced from 65 days from last year.
It is unfortunate for the Government that when it comes to public health, the situation is worse than when it took over from the previous government. It seems that the cuts in the healthcare budget by 7 billion euro have had a negative impact on patients’ waiting times and the system in general.
Obviously, for those that can afford private healthcare, the waiting time for an operation is much less. On average patients have to wait 43.5 days, less than half the time patients on the public health system have to wait.
Source: www.eleconomista.es