The impact of targeted wait time reduction strategies in Nova Scotia

Abstract

Canadian physicians speculate that the 2004 Accord policy to focus on reducing wait times for specific surgical specialties is taking resources from non-prioritized areas of care. The empirical evidence examining administrative data on surgical counts found that no adverse impact exists. Since no detailed examination of rates in Nova Scotia has been conducted, this study analyzes surgical volume trends using time series analysis and forecasting to compare actual surgical rates post-policy with predicted rates. The results suggest that while prioritized orthopaedic procedures appear to have been positively impacted by the policy, and the non-prioritized specialty gastroenterology shows signs of being negatively impacted by the policy, no other adverse impact is present thus far based on this particular analysis. Although the findings do not uniformly uphold the claims made by physicians, the policy should be evaluated annually as new data become available to ensure that adverse impacts do not occur.