The Private Cost of Public Queues for Medically Necessary Care, 2019 /

One way of estimating the privately borne cost However, the measurement of waiting times, or of waiting for care in Canada was originally de- the examination of the absolute delay Canadi- veloped by Steven Globerman and Lorna Hoye ans must endure in order to receive medically (1990).2 They calculated the cost of waiting by Table 1: Estimated Number of Procedures for which Patients are Waiting afte [...] First, multiply the number of of lost productivity measured by Globerman patients waiting for treatment by the wait times and Hoye cannot necessarily be applied today for those treatments in order to derive an esti- because of advances in medicine and the medi- mate of the total number of weeks all patients cal system’s ability to deal with pain and dis- will spend waiting for care. [...] Alternately, ans in 2018 (given in table 3), which provides an that cost works out to roughly $14,573 for each estimate for the value of the lost time to each individual among the 13.2% of patients in the individual,5 gives an estimate of the cost of pro- queue who were suffering considerable hard- ductive time that was lost while individuals ship while waiting for care.6 waited for medically nece [...] Of course, this number is a conservative es- timate of the private cost of waiting for care The estimated cost of waiting for care in Cana- in Canada. [...] Valuing all hours of the week, includ- cost of the wait time from specialist to treat- ing evenings and weekends but excluding ment, and do not include the cost of the 8.7 eight hours of sleep per night, at the average week wait time from referral by a general prac- hourly wage (given in table 3) would increase titioner to seeing a specialist,8 or other delays the estimated cost of waiting to $6.3