Surgery wait times in Canada worse than pre-pandemic: report [Video]

Patients in all provinces are waiting longer for hip and knee replacements, cancer surgeries and other priority procedures than before the COVID-19 pandemic, national data shows.

A report released Thursday by the Canadian Institute for Health Information says that’s the case even though more people underwent those procedures between April and September 2023 compared to the same months in 2019.

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The institute’s latest data looks at wait times for hip and knee replacements, hip fracture repair, certain cancer surgeries, as well as radiation therapy.

The data shows that 66 per cent of hip replacement patients had surgery within the recommended time frame of 26 weeks compared to 75 per cent in 2019, even though the number of procedures rose by 18 per cent.

As for knee replacement surgery, 59 per cent of people had the operation within that time frame, compared to …