How long are patients waiting for care?
It is well reported that long wait times for public treatment have pushed patients towards private pay, but OECD data reveals just how staggering the delays really are.
NHS systems generally fare worse than Bismarckian ones. Spain ranks worst for long waiting times for knee replacements with 79.1% of patients waiting over three months. Portugal and Sweden are quite close behind with 73.2% and 65.5% waiting over three months respectively.
Spain also performs the worst on total hip replacements with 68% of patients waiting over three months. It is the only country included where over half of patients waited this long for total hip replacements.
Italy is an outlier among NHS systems, with just 23.4% of patients waiting over three months for knee replacements and 26% waiting over three months for total hip replacements. Both of these are the lowest of the countries included.
Looking at waiting lists shows England’s record-breaking waiting lists have overtaken Ireland as the worst in Europe per capita.
Ireland is the only of the four nations included in both years of this study which has improved its waiting lists. Spain and Finland have both seen slight increases, while England has seen nearly 15,000 new additions for every 1m population.
Up to date figures could not be found for Quebec and Sweden which were included in last year’s figures.
Total waiting lists:
- Ireland had 497,090 people on the active waiting list as of the end of May 2023
- England had 7.47m people on the consultant-led elective care waiting list as of April 2023
- Finland had 150,000 people waiting for non-emergency care as of end of April – although a Finnish operator source has informed us this has since reached 170,000
- Spain had 793,521 patients waiting as of December 2022
