Calgary surgeon says broken system results in connected patients jumping queue
Posted Jan 10, 2013 1:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
CALGARY – A Calgary knee surgeon says queue-jumping occurs all the time because the system is so broken, people with connections will naturally do whatever they can to get timely help.
Dr. Nicholas Mohtadi told Alberta’s health-care preferential access inquiry that doctors are often pressured by friends, colleagues, and others to get in early for examinations that will then allow them to get on the wait-list for surgery.
Mohtadi says he sees such people as a professional courtesy or as a personal favour, but always outside his regular office hours so that no one who is on the list to see him gets bumped.
He agreed with the head of the inquiry, John Vertes, that it’s a form of queue-jumping, but says it’s an inevitable byproduct of a broken system.
Mohtadi says if all patients could get care in a reasonable amount of time, such back door lobbying would be drastically reduced.
He says the main problem is lack of defined standards of care and says, for example, some doctors demand unnecessary MRIs for knee problems, forcing those patients to ultimately wait longer for surgery.
