Cancer treatment wait times slower than provincial standard, auditor general says
BELLEVILLE – People with breast cancer in southeastern Ontario wait longer for surgery considered urgent than do patients anywhere else in the province, according to a report by Ontario’s auditor general.
On the other hand, if you need surgery for gynecological cancer, it will happen faster here than anywhere else in Ontario, the report says.
Some cancer treatment wait times in hospitals overseen by the South East Local Health Integration Network – one of 14 health networks created by the province to fund and oversee the health-care system – fail to meet the provincial standard, according to the report by Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk.
Across Ontario, urgent surgeries for 15 of 17 types of cancer that the report looked at didn’t meet the 14-day wait-time target, it says.
The South East Local Health Integration Network – which covers an area from Brighton to the west, Cardinal to the east, Perth to the northeast, and to Bancroft to the north – had the shortest wait times for urgent gynecological cancer surgery, at 12 days. The Central West Local Health Integration Network – which includes Orangeville, Brampton and Etobicoke – had the longest, at 74 days.
The South East LHIN had the longest wait time for urgent breast cancer surgery, at 35 days, while the North East LHIN – located between the James Bay coastline to the north and Parry Sound to the south – had the shortest wait times, at 12 days.
The Cancer Quality Council of Ontario – an advisory body to Cancer Care Ontario and the Ministry of Health and Long-term Care on how to improve cancer care in the province – has a target of 90 per cent of patients going from consultation to surgery in a specified time: immediate for Priority 1 patients, within 14 days for Priority 2, within 28 days for Priority 3 and within 84 days for Priority 4.
The Ontario average remains lower than the 90-per-cent target at 87 per cent, while the South East LHIN has at 83 per cent. This makes the South East LHIN 12th of the 14 LHINs across Ontario. It was also one of four LHINs whose percentage of patients meeting the target wait time in 2016 was less than in 2015.
Locally there are five hospitals that offer cancer treatment services:
- Brockville General Hospital
- Kingston General Hospital
- Lennox and Addington County General Hospital
- Perth and Smiths Falls District Hospital
- Belleville General Hospital.
Each of these hospitals offers drug therapy (including chemotherapy) and surgery for cancer patients. Kingston General Hospital is the only one in the South East LHIN that offers radiation treatment. Surgery, radiation and drug therapy are the three main treatments for cancer:
In 2015-16, Cancer Care Ontario – the Ontario government’s main cancer advisory body – and the provincial Ministry of Health and Long-term Care spent $1.6 billion to treat cancer, most going toward hospital procedures and treatment drugs, the auditor general’s report says. Yet cancer remained the leading cause of death in Ontario last year, it says.
Cancer Care Ontario set a goal of treating cancer with radiation in 48 per cent of cases in Ontario. According to the Cancer Society of Canada, radiation therapy destroys cancer cells with a high dosage of radiation that is usually administered daily. In 2015-16, the rate for radiation treatment was only 39 per cent in the province, the auditor’s report says.
Overall, the audit found that Ontario has effective procedures and systems in place to ensure patients receive treatment in a timely and in a cost-efficient manner in most – but not all – cases.
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