Risks of Waiting for Your Knee Replacement

Risks of Waiting for Your Knee Replacement

Wait times have went up drastically over the years for knee replacements.  This has left thousands of Canadians at sea on their own as they wait to get a surgery date. This can create major consequences if you experience long delays.  Let’s look at some reasons how waiting can make things worse:

  1. Mental health

    – Let’s face it, winter months in Canada can be long.  Seasonal affect disorder (SAD) is a real thing and very well known to many.  If you have an ailment that causes stress or continued pain, it can create and/or exacerbate SAD making you have low energy, poor mood and cause you to sleep too much.  Worse yet, it can turn into a full blown depression. Feeling discouraged, hopeless or in constant pain affects your focus, ability to function and can hamper your social interactions with people.  Not being able to play with your children or grandchildren, staying home from parties, or not being able to work can all create more stress on your mental health. When your mental health decreases, your whole body reacts to the stress.  This can make your pain unbearable, therefore, too difficult to maintain a healthy physical health.

  2. Physical health

    – Regular exercise is important to maintain strong bones, muscle strength, better sleep and more energy. It improves your mood and overall good health.  Obesity can put limitations on whether or not they can do surgery on you.  It’s a double edge sword.  You are in so much pain that you cannot do regular exercise, therefore, you put weight on.  However, if your BMI is too high, you may not qualify for private knee surgery.  As your weight increases into an unhealthy range, you could also develop high blood pressure or diabetes, which further complicates a surgery.  If you are not mobile due to excessive pain, there are still ways to get exercise in without exacerbating your issue or creating more pain.  For instance, if it is too painful to walk due to your hip, try swimming or doing sitting exercises with light weights.  *Always talk to your doctor or physiotherapist first though on what is the safest for you.  If you keep your physical fitness up, your recovery will go much smoother and quicker.  If you are not physically fit, be prepared for a much longer road to recovery.

  3. More risk to further injury

    – Waiting a couple months to have an already known injury that needs surgery is probably not going to hamper your situation in the grand scheme of things.  Having to wait several months, a year, and in some cases 2 years, can.  As we indicated above, physical health is crucial to having a safe and successful surgery.  The longer you wait, the harder it is to exercise to your full potential.  Inactivity will lead to muscle loss and increased stiffness to your joint.  This in turn will make it harder and harder to walk putting more stress on the joint by not having the muscles surrounding it to support things.  This can create even more issues such as making a joint deformity worse or cause injuries to other joints and/or body parts as they over compensate for the weight you can no longer support.

Like most things, this is not an end all.  You do have options.  The quickest way to get your knee surgery is to go the private manner.  Health Vantis works with many facilities that can offer you a private knee replacement without waiting months on end to get a surgery date that might be even another year down the road.  Contact us at info@healthvantis.com or 877-344-3544 for more details to how we can help you.

Health Vantis

www.healthvantis.ca

877-344-3544

info@healthvantis.com

Private Hip Replacement or Waiting for Your Turn

Canadians are all too familiar with medical wait times and the frustration and pain it can bring to a person and their family. Physical pain or great discomfort, inability to enjoy things you did before and monetary losses are present when waiting for your turn to get surgery or medical treatment. Contributing to universal health care through our taxes should ensure that all Canadians have equal access to timely and quality healthcare. Unfortunately, our healthcare is not even close to providing us with timely medical care.

According to the latest report from the Fraser Institute, orthopedic surgery wait times continue to increase. Orthopedic surgeries are surgeries that are considered “elective” or scheduled. The two most common orthopedic elective surgeries are hip and knee replacements. These two joint replacement procedures are mostly needed by those over 60-65 years old. So even more unfair to Canadians that have paid into the healthcare system all their working lives and are now facing such long delays. In 2022 the median wait from GP referral to see an orthopedic specialist was 16 weeks and to get surgery after seeing the specialist was 32.4 weeks in Canada. The total median wait time adds up to 48.4 weeks. That is an overall increase of 14.3 weeks from 2021.

Of course, these wait times differ from province to province, with Manitoba having the longest wait in 2022, a total of 104.9 weeks median wait time, and Ontario having the shortest median wait time of 29.9 weeks.

If you were put on a long medical wait list and would like to explore your private options Health Vantis can help. We will connect you to a reputable and safe medical facility and provide you with full medical concierge service from the first phone call till you are back home and are recovering. There are no wait times. We can get someone to surgery 3-4 weeks after we submit their medical records for review. To find out more information about our services please contact us toll-free at 877 344 3544 or by email info@healthvantis.com

Private Spine Surgery or Waiting for Your Turn

Imagine having serious back pain and needing surgery and then waiting for 58.9 weeks to get it! That is not something any Canadian who is experiencing back pain is looking forward to. Unfortunately, this is the reality of our universal health care. According to the Fraser Institute, in 2022 median wait time from referral by GP to treatment for neurosurgery was 58.9 weeks. This is an increase of 25.8 weeks from 2021.

Back problems are among the most common chronic conditions in Canada. Four out of five adults will experience at least one episode of back pain at some point in their lives. Not all back pain is resolved through surgery. Spinal surgery should be the last resort and other, non-invasive treatments should be tried first. However, even seeing a neurosurgeon to determine whether or not one needs surgery takes 45.7 weeks (median medical time waited from a referral by GP in 2022).

Some provinces fare better in their wait times to see a neurosurgeon. If you live in Quebec, you are in luck! The median wait time was only 4 weeks! Neighboring Ontarians are not so lucky, their median wait time is 78 weeks!!!

If you were put on a long medical wait list and would like to explore your private options Health Vantis can help. We will connect you to a reputable and safe medical facility and provide you with full medical concierge service from the first phone call till you are back home and are recovering. There are no wait times. We can get someone to surgery 3-4 weeks after we submit their medical records for review. To find out more information about our services please contact us toll-free at 877 344 3544 or by email info@healthvantis.com

Private Hysterectomy vs Waiting in Canada

Fraser Institute recently released its new report for medical wait times in Canada in 2022. The overall increases in wait times show up in several specialties. One of them is GYN. The median wait time for a GYN from a referral by GP to treatment is 32.1 weeks, 8.1 weeks increase from 2021.  The median wait time from GP referral to see a GYN is 15.7 weeks and from seeing GYN to get treatment is 16.4 weeks.

Of course, these numbers vary depending on the province you live in. Saskatchewan has the shortest wait times, with 4 weeks from GP referral to GYN, and then 11.9 weeks from GYN to treatment, making a total median wait time of 15.9 weeks. Atlantic Canada leads the worse wait times for GYN. In NS, one can wait 110.7 weeks to see a GYN once their GP refers them, and then an additional 52 weeks to get treatment. Total wait time can be 162.7 weeks – over 3 years!

For many women, such wait times present a serious issue. Many seek private health care, such as a private hysterectomy or private laparoscopy. In the past, we helped many women get private GYN surgery in a timely manner. In general, we can arrange a private hysterectomy within 3-4 weeks from the time we receive your medical records.

Private medical facilities we work with have virtually no wait times. Health Vantis will connect you to a safe and affordable private medical facility and make all the logistical arrangements for you. Reach out to us by email info@healthvantis.com or toll free 877 344 3544 to learn more.

 

Private Surgery or Waiting: Canada Medical Wait Times 2022

According to Fraser Institute, 2022 was worse than 2021 for medical wait times. Compared to 2021, the medical wait times in Canada increased by 1.8 weeks. The total waiting time between referral from a general practitioner and delivery of medically necessary elective treatment by a specialist averaged across all 12 specialties and 10 provinces surveyed, has risen from 25.6 weeks in 2021 to 27.4 in 2022. As a reminder in the year 1993, it was just 9.3 weeks.

Ontario reports the shortest total wait in 2022 (20.3 weeks), followed by British Columbia (25.8 weeks) and Quebec (29.4 weeks). Prince Edward Island has the longest total wait at 64.7 weeks, followed by Nova Scotia (58.2 weeks) and New Brunswick (43.3 weeks).

So even if you are in Ontario, you could be facing a 5-month wait time. However, if you are in Atlantic Canada, your medical delays can be close to over a year. The full report by the Fraser institute can be found here.

It is understandable that many Canadians do not wish to wait and look for private options for surgeries or specialty consultations. Health Vantis can help by connecting you to a safe and affordable private medical facility and providing you with white glove medical concierge service, making all the logistical arrangements for you.

Private medical facilities we work with have virtually no wait times. In most cases, we can get someone to surgery in 3-4 weeks from the date we receive their medical records. If you are wondering about your private medical options, please reach out to us to discuss, email info@healthvantis.com or toll-free 877-344 3544