Until yesterday (Oct. 19, 2004), Health Minister Hansen tried to shift the focus away from longer wait lists by referring to the number of surgeries that were performed. According to the Fraser Institute, BC was amongst the longest wait list provinces with specialist to treatment wait lists of 11.6 weeks. When confronted by that study, he appeared to change his approach when he said that the Fraser Institute measures responses from doctors while Statistics Canada measures responses from patients.

The wait list data from Statistics Canada is not yet reliable; when it reported that the BC wait time for specialists was 3 weeks in 2003, it added the words "use with caution". In other words, even Statistics Canada questioned the reliability of its survey. The Canadian Community Health Survey was first conducted in 2003; it replaced the Health Services Access Survey following agreement at the September 2000 First Ministers' Health Accord to standardize reporting to constituents. It is a 29 page, 45 question, telephone survey which includes the question "How long did you have to wait between when you and your doctor decided that you should see a specialist and when you actually visited the specialist?" A note on the questionnaire for the interviewer added "Probe to get the most precise answer possible." It is not surprising that using that question to measure wait times yields results that must be used with caution. When survey results are far out of line with other measures, "use with caution" is another way of saying the results are not reliable, perhaps useless.

More total hip and knee surgeries were performed in BC in 2002-03 than were done in fiscal year 1998-1999, but it is difficult to interpret the statistics without adjusting for various slowdowns such as the doctor's "RAD days" or HEU's strike. In 2002-03, there were 2,788 total hip replacements and 2,706 total knee replacements billed on a fee-for-service basis (pdf). Over the two years since fiscal year 2000-01, that is an increase of 11.3% for hips and 3.1% for knees. Of course, the numbers change by picking different start and end years. The percentages in the above quote from Hansen appear to compare fiscal year 2002-03 with 2001-02 when the number of procedures were lower than in the previous year, 2000-01.

Anyone with acute pain doesn't care about playing games with statistics. It is simply not true that British Columbians get the care they need when they need it. We all know that.