Study Shows that Utilizing Private Clinics for Health Care Can Decrease Wait Times
A study from the Fraser Institute suggests that a successful program in Saskatchewan, which reduced wait times by 47 percent, could serve as a roadmap for other provinces in Canada to address long health-care wait times.
The province introduced the Saskatchewan Surgical Initiative (SSI) in 2010 to tackle increasing medical wait times by utilizing private clinics for necessary non-emergency surgical procedures like knee and hip replacements.
The study found that between 2010 and 2014, the program played a vital role in decreasing wait times in Saskatchewan by 47 percent, along with almost a 75 percent reduction in patients waiting for surgery for over three months.
According to Fraser Institute senior fellow Nadeem Esmail, the success of the Saskatchewan Surgical Initiative provides important lessons for policymakers nationwide, showing that lengthy wait times in health-care systems can be significantly reduced through thoughtful reform.
The SSI initiative streamlined referrals across the province to better match patients with available specialists and utilized private clinics for publicly funded procedures. This resulted in a 47 percent reduction in the average medical wait time from the patient’s referral to when treatment was completed over the five-year duration of the program.
As a result, Saskatchewan transitioned from having some of the lengthiest wait times in Canada to some of the shortest. However, once the SSI concluded in 2014, wait times in the province notably increased, while wait times in other provinces remained unchanged.
The study emphasized that despite the controversy surrounding the use of private clinics in Canada, private surgical procedures are common in many successful universal health-care systems. The study also highlighted that the outsourcing of medical procedures to private clinics did not compromise universal access to health care in Saskatchewan, thanks to regulations in place to safeguard patient access and control costs.
Wait Times in Canada
According to the Fraser Institute’s “Waiting Your Turn” report released in December, the average national wait time to see a specialist after being referred by a general practitioner was 14.6 weeks in 2023. The wait time from specialist appointment to treatment stood at 13.1 weeks, resulting in an overall average wait time of 27.7 weeks in Canada.
This 27.7-week average wait time is the longest in the report’s 30-year history and is 198 percent longer than the 1993 average. Specific provinces like Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick had some of the highest wait times in the country.
