rick recommends a reading that says very little about actual deaths
while waiting:
===========
should the people of Ontario be concerned by those numbers?
There are doctors there that think so...
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/170/3/354
==========================

Again, I commend you on your sources. I read this source and it is very
much a theoretical or hypothetical-case paper. Dr Hill presents a
simple compartment model. He hypothesizes that perhaps waiting times
could be reduced if, rather than giving hgh-risk patients priority for
sugery, those with lower risks were given that priority.

The concluding comments are what really counts:

"Thus, the natural clinical tendency to give priority to the group with
a higher mortality rate does not yield fewer deaths among patients on
the waiting list and leads to a larger overall waiting list. To reduce
the size of the waiting list by giving priority to the group with lower
mortality rate (see Table 1) would probably be considered cynical and
unethical, but it should be noted that such a policy would not increase
the overall number of deaths per year.

It can also be shown that these results hold where there are more than
2 risk groups.

This analysis is not intended to be normative or to constitute a
recommendation that priorities for surgery be changed. "

So, there you have it. An interesting theoretical exercise "not
intended to be normative or to constitute a recommendation that
priorities for surgery be changed. "

frtzw906