Elective surgery means surgery that can improve quality of life, but is not otherwise life saving right?
Canada also has the lowest number of doctors per 10k, and the lowest wait for primary care.
The US has more doctors, but the highest time to primary care.
I don’t know many elective surgeries that can be scheduled without a primary care referring the patient to the surgeon for consult. Not to mention, beside plastic surgery, it’s usually a case where the patient has no idea they could benefit from the elective surgery.
Maybe you don’t need an appointment to see a GP in Canada? I’m from Austria and GPs are walk-in for most things here, maybe they’re the same. But yeah, the graph is pretty useless without explaining what kind of appointments and what kind of surgeries.
To your last point: it could be, eg, your orthopedist (who isn’t a surgeon) referring you to an orthopedic surgeon, no GP required in that case. But that just makes it even more complicated, because in some countries, you need a GP referral to any specialist. I think sometimes even every time you see the specialist.
What is misleading about it, it’s just numbers? It basically says… My knee hurts, let me go get it checked out: wait time column A. Physician says I need a knee replacement, wait time column B.
The chart isn’t claiming anything. It doesn’t say what is better or worse, just the wait times.
What stands out to me on that chart is that the US is more than twice as bad as any other country when it comes to wait time for primary care appointments.
right? like what is that… i consider a wait of more than a couple of days to be too long and just go to a random walk-in clinic… in a month most problems are gone already on their own or have gotten way out of control
Compared to European countries, no. Compared to Canada, yes.
Elective surgery means surgery that can improve quality of life, but is not otherwise life saving right?
Canada also has the lowest number of doctors per 10k, and the lowest wait for primary care.
The US has more doctors, but the highest time to primary care.
I don’t know many elective surgeries that can be scheduled without a primary care referring the patient to the surgeon for consult. Not to mention, beside plastic surgery, it’s usually a case where the patient has no idea they could benefit from the elective surgery.
That graph is highly misleading.
Maybe you don’t need an appointment to see a GP in Canada? I’m from Austria and GPs are walk-in for most things here, maybe they’re the same. But yeah, the graph is pretty useless without explaining what kind of appointments and what kind of surgeries.
To your last point: it could be, eg, your orthopedist (who isn’t a surgeon) referring you to an orthopedic surgeon, no GP required in that case. But that just makes it even more complicated, because in some countries, you need a GP referral to any specialist. I think sometimes even every time you see the specialist.
That’s assuming you even have primary care. There’s a desperate shortage of family doctors in Ontario.
What is misleading about it, it’s just numbers? It basically says… My knee hurts, let me go get it checked out: wait time column A. Physician says I need a knee replacement, wait time column B.
The chart isn’t claiming anything. It doesn’t say what is better or worse, just the wait times.
Meh, it is from Australia, so unless they have reason to make Canada look bad, it’s just numbers
What stands out to me on that chart is that the US is more than twice as bad as any other country when it comes to wait time for primary care appointments.
right? like what is that… i consider a wait of more than a couple of days to be too long and just go to a random walk-in clinic… in a month most problems are gone already on their own or have gotten way out of control