TORONTO - A new report suggests that cutting wait times for priority surgeries hasn't lengthened delays for other types of operations, as some had feared.
In 2004, Canada's First Ministers agreed to invest billions of dollars to reduce waiting times in for five types of procedures - hip and knee replacements, vision restoration, cancer surgeries, cardiovascular procedures and medical imaging.
A report by the Canadian Institute for Health Information says an eight per cent increase in surgeries in the priority areas doesn't appear to have come at the expense of other types of operations.
In the two years after the program started, the rates of surgeries for non-priority procedures either remained stable or increased slightly in all provinces.
Nearly 60,000 additional surgeries were performed in priority areas between 2004-2005 and 2006-2007.
Joint replacements and cataract surgery have accounted for most of the growth in wait time priority surgeries.
