Effect of Covid on waiting times for elective surgery
Long waiting times for elective surgery have been a problem across much of Western Europe for years, but Covid has unequivocally compounded this, opening the door to outsourcing to for-profits to get waiting times down.
Our infographic above is based on OECD figures, and highlights how the postponement of non-urgent interventions has exacerbated the problem of rising demand and limited supply.
According to OECD data, In 2019, among 15 countries with comparable data, over 60% of patients remained on the waiting list for cataract surgery for more than three months in Costa Rica, Norway, Estonia and Finland while the proportion of patients waiting for over three months was relatively low (20% or less) in Hungary, Italy and Denmark.
For knee replacements, in Chile, Estonia, Costa Rica, Portugal and Norway, over 80% of patients remained on the waiting list for over three months, whereas the share was much lower in Denmark (14%) and Italy (28%).
The adverse impact of the pandemic is obvious when looking at the figures for 2020. In all cases, waiting times have increased. In countries where data was available, OECD figures show the median number of days on a waiting list increased by on average 30 days for cataract surgery, 88 days for knee replacement, and 58 days for hip replacements (not graphed here) compared to 2019.
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