The Minister of Health of the Government of the Canary Islands, José Manuel Baltar, and the director of the Canary Islands Health Service, Conrado Domínguez, reported this Wednesday that "all hospitals" in the archipelago have managed to "reduce" the surgical waiting list. In the case of Lanzarote, they stated that the surgical waiting list of more than six months has decreased "40%" in two years.
Regarding the Canary Islands as a whole, the health officials pointed out that the surgical waiting list has experienced an interannual reduction of 14.1% according to data recorded as of December 31, 2018. According to them, the comparison with the same period of the previous year reflects a decrease of 4,049 fewer patients on the structural surgical waiting list of the SCS hospitals.
According to José Manuel Baltar, "the change in trend that had been observed since the second half of 2017 has been consolidating, so that it has also been possible to reduce the average waiting time for an intervention", which "has been reduced by one month and one week, specifically by 36.8 days, during this year".
The Minister of Health specified that these results, which place the surgical waiting list at 24,629, are "the result of the effort of the SCS workers, who have managed, with the implementation of the different programs, to reduce the surgical waiting list by 28 percent in two years, going from 34,327 who were on the waiting list as of December 31, to the current figure". He also added that "the current data, although they have to continue improving, have not been recorded since 2011, the year in which the waiting list began to rise until reaching its maximum in 2016".
Four surgical specialties concentrate 70% of the waiting list
Baltar stated that, in the last year, "a greater effort" has been made on patients who waited more than six months and that, therefore, the waiting list of more than six months was reduced by 40 percent, which means that 5,809 people saw their process resolved in 2018.
The Minister of Health explained that four surgical specialties concentrate 70 percent of the waiting list: Traumatology, Ophthalmology, General and Digestive Surgery and Urology, "just the specialties that achieved the greatest reduction were the first three together with Otorhinolaryngology".
Two-year balance
José Manuel Baltar and Conrado Domínguez also offered a balance of the management of the waiting list for the two years they have been at the head of the Ministry "in which the operating rooms of public hospitals have been at maximum performance", according to them. In this sense, Domínguez highlighted not only that the surgical waiting list in those two years has been reduced "by 28 percent", but that the decrease in those who waited the longest decreased "by 55 percent, going from 12,817 patients in December 2016 to the current 5,809".
According to him, "one of the important indicators that shows the behavior of the approach to the waiting list is that of the average waiting time, which has been reduced by 21 percent, going from an average of 181 days in December 2016 to the current 139, that is, 42 days less in two years.
In this sense, they added that the median, which is the statistical data that reflects that half of the patients waiting for a surgical intervention wait that number of days or less, is 77 days, compared to 131 in December 2016. This means that half of the patients take less than 77 days to be operated on, according to the Ministry of Health.
The director of the SCS advanced that all hospitals have managed to reduce the surgical waiting list, although he highlighted that the Doctor Negrín Hospital has managed to reduce its average waiting time by 100 days, the Fuerteventura Hospital by 71 days and the La Candelaria Hospital by 53.
Hospitals that have achieved the best results
Likewise, he highlighted the reduction of the waiting list of more than six months of the three hospitals that achieved the best results: Dr. Negrín with a reduction of 74 percent, going from having 2,515 patients on the waiting list of more than six months in December 2016 to the current 651; the Hospital de La Candelaria in Tenerife with a decrease of 68 percent of its list of more than six months, the Complejo Hospitalario Universitario Insular Materno Infantil with a decrease of 54 percent and the Hospital Universitario de Canarias with a decrease of 33 percent.
In addition, although starting from lower figures on the waiting list, the hospitals of Fuerteventura, La Palma and the Molina Orosa of Lanzarote also achieved "significant reductions" in their waiting list of more than six months, "of 97, 90 and 40 percent respectively", according to health officials.
"Although these figures indicate that the programs launched -CMA24, Plan Demora, Planes Funciona and Plan Verano- have been giving good results, it is necessary to continue working, evaluating and correcting those that have not had the expected behavior to solve the health problems of patients. In addition, we will continue to act and focus on the specialties that accumulate the most waiting list and waiting time", Domínguez pointed out.
Consultations and diagnostic tests
On the other hand, according to health officials, the public hospitals of the SCS carried out a total of 3,195,411 consultations during 2018 with a daily average of 12,290 consultations, which has meant that the number of patients on the waiting list has remained with an increase of just 400 more patients and with a reduction of 16 percent of the waiting list in the two years, with a total of 132,667 patients, compared to the 157,796 registered at the end of 2016, that is, 25,129 fewer patients.
Regarding diagnostic tests, they have highlighted the reduction of the delay by 14 percent and 21 days on average and, in the case of consultations, by six fewer days of waiting.
The Minister of Health and the director of the SCS thanked "the collaboration, effort and professionalism of all the health and non-health personnel of the Canary Islands Health Service, whose work has been decisive in this new decrease in waiting lists".