reported<\/a> earlier this year that between 2020 to the end of August 2024, at least 10 per cent of patients with highly aggressive cancers waited more than 36 days for surgery that the province recommends should be done within 14 days.\u00a0<\/p>\nSince 2020, the percentage of Priority 2 cancer surgeries completed within the target time each calendar year ranged between 53 per cent and 65 per cent, according to government data The Trillium obtained through the freedom-of-information process.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dr. David Urbach, professor of surgery at the University of Toronto and head of the Department of Surgery at Women’s College Hospital, told The Trillium at the time that it isn\u2019t surprising to see fewer than 60 per cent of Priority 2 cases done within 14 days as it can be difficult to get a patient ready for surgery within two weeks due to people\u2019s availability or the availability of an operating room.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cVery few operations that aren’t emergencies that don’t need to be done today need to be done within two weeks,\u201d he said at the end of January. \u201cIt’s probably fine to be done in 21 days, or 28 days, or even 40 days. It’s not like someone’s on their way out dying \u2026 that’s Priority 1, and those patients are in hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked during the recent provincial election campaign if he would guarantee that all Ontarians needing a surgery would get one within the recommended time frame if re-elected, Doug Ford promised \u201cbetter health care.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re going to put more money into the system. We’re going to have more doctors because we put more medical seats in universities,\u201d Ford said before being re-elected in February. \u201cWe’re going to make sure we put every single penny we can to have a better health-care system and also connect the people \u2026 to family physicians.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hillary Buchan-Terrell, advocacy manager at the Canadian Cancer Society, said that while there\u2019s been some progress in cancer care since the pandemic, \u201cimportant gaps remain,\u201d including in reducing surgical wait times for cancer patients.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She said Ontario Health\u2019s report shows wait times in Ontario are \u201cconsistent,\u201d but that many people across Canada are still reporting long waits for care.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cDelays are distressing to people with cancer and may result in worse outcomes like later stage at diagnosis, disease progression and poorer survival,\u201d Buchan-Terrell said in a statement to The Trillium.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone in Ontario deserves timely access to cancer care. That\u2019s why we\u2019re calling on all governments, including Ontario, to work together to establish reasonable, Canada-wide benchmarks for cancer care wait times across the cancer care continuum, set targets for these benchmarks and report annually on progress,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Buchan-Terrell also called on the province to invest more in the health-care workforce \u201cto support cancer surgeries\u201d impacted by the \u201chealth-care crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mammograms, fecal test volumes \u2018on track\u2019<\/p>\n
The Ontario Health report also included data on cancer screening tests, with the number of fecal tests and mammograms completed during the first three months of 2024 surpassing pre-pandemic volumes \u2014 which is how the agency measures system performance \u2014 and the number of Pap tests falling short.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The target for these screen tests was 105 per cent of pre-pandemic volumes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the fourth quarter of 2023-24, there were 227,608 fecal tests done \u2014 a 130 per cent increase over the 175,286 tests performed during the fourth quarter of 2019-20 \u2014 with Ontario Health writing in its report that \u201cincreased access to testing shows improvement in post-pandemic recovery.\u201d These were also more than the 184,575 fecal tests completed during the same period in 2022-23.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The number of mammograms increased by 122 per cent early last year (198,179 tests) compared to pre-pandemic levels (162,536 tests) and during the same quarter the previous year (176,247).\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Pap tests during the fourth quarter of 2023-24 \u2014 183,549 tests \u2014 were down, reaching just 78.5 per cent of the pre-pandemic volume (233,840 tests in the fourth quarter of 2018-19).\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ontario Health described this as a \u201cmajor deviation,\u201d saying in its report that there has been a decline in Pap tests following guideline updates in 2021 that changed the age for starting screening from 21 to 25.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Routine cancer screening through Ontario\u2019s screening programs was paused during the pandemic as the province tried to increase capacity within the health-care system to deal with the rise in COVID-19 cases.<\/p>\n
Buchan-Terrell\u00a0said while it was “encouraging to see that some cancer screening programs are recovering,” the decline in Pap tests was “concerning,\u00a0especially with rates of cervical cancer rising in recent years.”<\/p>\n
“Ontario is now transitioning from Pap tests to HPV testing, which is a more accurate way to screen for cervical cancer,” she said. “As this change happens, it is important to ensure that all Ontarians, and especially those in underserved communities, have equitable access to testing \u2014\u00a0including self-sampling options.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Neither Ontario Health nor Health Minister Sylvia Jones\u2019 office responded to questions or requests for more recent data before publication.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just over half of the surgeries done on patients with highly aggressive cancers in early 2024 were performed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":["post-11368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}