چکیده (انگلیسی):

Background:Wait times are an important measure of access to various health care sectors and from a patient’s
perspective include several stages in their care. While mechanisms to improve wait times from specialty care have
been developed across Canada, little is known about wait times from primary to specialty care. Our objectives were
to calculate the wait times from when a referral is made by a family physician (FP) to when a patient sees a
specialist physician and examine patient and provider factors related to these wait times.
Methods:Our study used the Electronic Medical Record Administrative data Linked Database (EMRALD) which is a
linkage of FP electronic medical record (EMR) data to the Ontario, Canada administrative data. The EMR referral date
was linked to the administrative physician claims date to calculate the wait times. Patient age, sex, socioeconomic
status, comorbidity and FP continuity of care and physician age, sex, practice location, practice size and
participation in a primary care delivery model were examined with respect to wait times.
Results:The median waits from medical specialists ranged from 39 to 76 days and for surgical specialists from 33
days to 66 days. With a few exceptions, patient factors were not associated with wait times from primary care to
specialty care. Similarly physician factors were not consistently associated with wait times, except for FP practice
location and size.
Conclusions:Actual wait times for a referral from a FP to seeing a specialist physician are longer than those
reported by physician surveys. Wait times from primary to specialty care need to be included in the calculation of
surgical and diagnostic wait time benchmarks in Canada