ArticleCanadian journal of surgery. Journal canadien de chirurgie2004
Monitoring trends in waiting periods in Canada for elective surgery: validation of a method using administrative data.
Article in Canadian journal of surgery. Journal canadien de chirurgie, 2004. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Do private clinics or expedited fees reduce disability duration for injured workers following knee surgery?Healthcare policy = Politiques de sante · 2011Article
- Do administrative databases accurately measure waiting times for medical care? Evidence from general surgery.Canadian journal of surgery. Journal canadien de chirurgie · 2007Article
- Waiting for cancer care: exploiting our national laboratory.Canadian journal of surgery. Journal canadien de chirurgie · 2006Article
- Wait times: the appropriateness of the methodology and how they affect patients.Canadian journal of surgery. Journal canadien de chirurgie · 2004Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundProvincial governments require timely, economical methods to monitor surgical waiting periods. Although use of prospective procedure-specific registers would be the ideal method, a less elaborate system has been proposed that is based on physician billing data. This study assessed the validity of using the date of the last service billed prior to surgery as a proxy for the beginning of the post-referral, pre-surgical waiting period.
methodWe examined charts for 31,824 elective surgical encounters between 1992 and 1996 at an Ontario teaching hospital. The date of the last service before surgery (the last billing date) was compared with the date of the consultant's letter indicating a decision to book surgery (i.e., to begin waiting).
resultsSeveral surgical specialties (but excluding cardiac, orthopedic and gynecologic) had a close correlation between the dates of the last pre-surgery visit and those of the actual decision to place the patient on the waiting list. Similar results were found for 12 of 15 individually studied procedures, including some orthopedic and gynecological procedures.
conclusionUsed judiciously, billing data is a timely, inexpensive and generally accurate method by which provincial governments could monitor trends in waiting times for appropriately selected surgical procedures.
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Identifiers
15264378PMC3211835What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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