Canadian Physiotherapy Association has issued a press release on Thursday, August 09, 2007 about waiting times for physiotherapy in Ontario.
Some 3,000 family physicians and 1,100 physiotherapists from Ontario were surveyed to identify how funding and wait times act as barriers to accessing physiotherapy services by researchers at the Arthritis Community Research and Evaluation Unit and University of Toronto.
Some numbers reported:
64% Unacceptable – Number of physicians who felt wait times for rehabilitation were unacceptable
3.6x Longer waits – Wait times for publicly funded physiotherapy treatments were 3.6 times longer than for privately funded treatments
150 Days – The longest reported wait for physiotherapy services
17% Now without access – Access to rehabilitation services has likely deteriorated since the time of the initial study due to the delisting of physiotherapy services at Schedule 5 clinics. A subsequent study found that 17.7 per cent of patients who required physiotherapy services did not receive treatment because they were uninsured or were not able to pay privately.
10x Better health with access to physiotherapy – The same follow-up study found that individuals who received required physiotherapy services were 10 times as likely to report having good health compared to those who did not receive required services.
The press release quotes Dr. Michel D. Landry, President of the Canadian Physiotherapy Association who says that:
“This study signals that access to physiotherapy and rehabilitation services has reached a critical point in the last five years.”
“Poor access to necessary rehabilitative services is an issue across Canada, the consequences of which will be detrimental to the overall health status of Canadians, especially as the population continues to age, and as the incidence of chronic diseases such as arthritis increase at an alarming pace”
Take a look on the Ottawa Citizen article following the press release. The press release is not on the CPA website yet, however, since Natalie Bovair, CPA’s Director of Communications has kindly forwarded it to me I attach it here in PDF format.
** Photo by Neil D.
