Spain's national health service (INSALUD) reduced the mean waiting time for surgical procedures from three months to two during 1998. Patients are now waiting about five months less than they did in 1996, when the mean waiting time was about seven months.
These encouraging data were presented last month by the minister of health, Jose Manuel Romay-Beccaria, who said that “the waiting lists are the most important problem of Spanish health…so these figures are the best indicator of health services' functioning.”
Alberto Nuñez-Feijoo, the president of INSALUD, and Rafael Matesanz, the head of the department for primary and specialised health care, highlighted the fact that the number of patients waiting more than six months for an operation had decreased for the third consecutive year.
The total waiting list, which in June 1996 stood at 190000 patients, had been reduced to 132221 patients by the end of 1998.
During the same period, the number of surgery patients treated as day cases rose from 36000 in 1996 to more than 95000 in 1998.
In the opinion of Nuñez-Feijoo, the reductions were achieved by the increased use of day surgery and, in particular, by an improvement in hospital management. He said that “the important thing is that responsibility for reducing waiting lists has been assumed by each hospital department and professional team rather than by the INSALUD itself.
The INSALUD is aiming to reduce waiting times again this year, so that by the end of 1999 no patients should have to wait more than six months for an operation. It also wants to reduce the mean waiting time to 60 days (from the present 66 days) and to cut waits for outpatient appointments to a maximum of three months and a mean of three weeks.