Patients waiting for a surgical operation in the Canary Islands public health system have decreased by 6.23% in the last year and the average time each of them waits has decreased by 24 days, to four months and seven days, for the first time in years less than the national average.
The Minister of Health of the autonomous community, Esther Monzón, and the director of the Canary Islands Health Service (SCS), Carlos Díaz, explained that these results are the result of a plan that has focused on working preferentially with all those patients who had already exceeded six months of waiting, a backlog of pending operations that has been reduced by 21.87% in the last year.
At this time, half of the 34,125 patients who as of June 30 were awaiting an operation in the public hospitals of the Canary Islands have waited 80 days or less.
In the last year, the ten hospitals of the Canary Islands Health Service have reduced the average time to undergo surgery.
Among the five reference hospitals, the reduction of 40.71 days achieved by the University Hospital of the Canary Islands (HUC) stands out, followed by the Insular Hospital of Gran Canaria, with a decrease of 25.68 days; La Candelaria, with a reduction of 18.25 days; the Doctor Negrín, with a decrease of 10.55 days, and the Maternal and Child Hospital, with a decrease of 3.41 days.
The reduction in the average delay was also 65.24 days at the Nuestra Señora de Los Reyes Hospital (El Hierro), 57.86 days at Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe (La Gomera), 37.12 days at the Doctor José Molina Orosa (Lanzarote), 23 days at the General Hospital of Fuerteventura and 16.02 days at the General Hospital of La Palma.
The public hospitals with the most delay in operating at this time in the islands are the HUC, with 165.10 days; the General Hospital of La Palma, with 131.08 days; the Insular Hospital of Gran Canaria, with 125.87 days; and La Candelaria, with 122.11 days.
The rest are below three months: 88.57 days are expected at the Doctor Negrín University Hospital, 85.13 at the Maternal and Child Hospital, 63.27 at the Doctor Molina Orosa, 57.26 at the General Hospital of Fuerteventura, 32.41 at Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe and 10.87 at Nuestra Señora de los Reyes.
Only two hospitals have not managed to reduce the number of patients on the surgical list: the Insular Hospital of Gran Canaria has gone from 6,995 to 7,014 (+0.27%) and La Candelaria has increased from 7,147 to 7,426 (+3.90%). All the others currently have fewer patients awaiting surgery than in June 2023.
The director of the SCS has clarified that the total volume of patients is important, but his team gives more relevance when assessing the service to the average waiting time. "To put it in some way," he explained, "it is preferable that 1,000 people wait three days than 200 wait five years."
Carlos Díaz stressed that the current Health team began working in September 2023 and has already managed to ensure that the Canary Islands no longer have the public health system where people wait the longest for an operation, a position it had been occupying for years.
The current average delay, located at 127.41 days, is not, however, the lowest that the Canary Islands health system has had. In fact, it is still above the 126.35 days expected in June 2022.
However, it has been decreasing for three consecutive semesters: from 156.76 days in December 2022, it has gone to 152.91 days in June 2023, 146.52 in December 2023 and the current 127.41.
The total number of patients awaiting an appointment with the specialist has also decreased: from 144,600 in June of last year, it has dropped to 139,300 in June of this year, 3.66% less.
The Minister of Health has thanked the SCS staff for the effort made to reach these figures, with which she has specified that they are not "satisfied, because there is room for improvement."
