The Canarian Health Service reported this Thursday a slight drop in the surgical waiting lists in the public hospitals of the Canary Islands. At the same time, the number of people waiting for a consultation with a specialist is growing.
In the Canary Islands, more than 147,000 people were waiting to be seen by the 27 external consultations available in public services. Meanwhile, in the Doctor José Molina Orosa hospital in Lanzarote there were 1,804 patients.
On the island, the specialties with the most patients waiting for a medical appointment are Traumatology and Orthopedic Surgery (273), Dermatology (213), Rehabilitation (144), Rheumatology (142), Otorhinolaryngology (115), Cardiology (102) and General and Digestive Surgery (102).
While, below one hundred people waiting is Pediatrics (95), Allergy (90), Gynecology (87), Digestive (77), Hematology (73), Pneumology (50) and Endocrinology (47).
The remaining specialties had less than 30 people waiting on December 31.
Surgical lists
In the particular case of Lanzarote, 1,349 people were waiting on December 31, 2023 to undergo surgery at the Doctor José Molina Orosa Hospital.
The data shows that the structural waiting list, of those patients who were waiting to undergo surgery depending on the organization and available resources, is slightly smaller than a year ago. Specifically, there are 82 fewer people waiting than in December 2022 and 297 fewer patients than in June 2023.
The Molina Orosa has better data than in December 2019, before the start of the coronavirus pandemic. At that time, more than 2,000 citizens waited nearly five months to be operated on. With respect to 2019, waiting times have also improved, with an average delay of three months at present.
Waiting times have also been reduced in the last two years. In December 2023, half of the patients waited 59 days to be operated on. While in the same period of 2022, it was 75 and in 2021, 64.
Most of the patients from Lanzarote had been waiting less than six months to be operated on, while 186 of them had been waiting for more than half a year.
Distribution by specialties
Among the surgical specialties with the longest waiting list is the General and Digestive Surgery service, with 386 users. Meanwhile, operations in the area of Traumatology and Orthopedic Surgery concentrated 523 users waiting for the operating room, 181 had been waiting more than six months for that intervention. This unit concentrates the longest average delay time, more than five months.
In contrast, Ophthalmology had 126 people waiting in December last year, with a delay of less than a month, compared to Gynecology with 90 people and an average delay of almost two months.
In the case of the Urology service, 105 users wait more than two and a half months to be operated on.
Complementary tests
Simple ultrasounds are the complementary tests that suffer the greatest delay in the Doctor José Molina Orosa Hospital, with 127 citizens in the queue and an average of four and a half months of extension.
After them, nuclear magnetic resonance (MRI) keeps 70 people waiting, with an average delay of a month and a half.
Thirdly, as of December 31, 2023, in the Molina Orosa there were 41 patients on the waiting list for a mammogram, with a delay of almost two months.
While in fourth position, 30 people were waiting to undergo a computed axial tomography (CAT scan), with a delay time of just over two weeks.
In fifth position, 12 users were waiting for an endoscopy, with a waiting period of one month and two weeks.
Finally, echocardiograms and ergometry (or stress test) had no delay on the island.
Hospitals of the Canary Islands
To date, the hospitals that offer the fastest surgical care are those of Nuestra Señora de Los Reyes (El Hierro), with 22 people waiting and an average delay of less than a month and the Hospital Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe in La Gomera, with 161 patients waiting and a time of just over two months.
Meanwhile, the Canarian hospital that accumulates the longest wait is the Hospital Universitario de Canarias (Tenerife), with 10,401 patients waiting to be operated on.
