"BCITORGB" wrote in message
ups.com...
rick recommends a reading that says very little about actual
deaths
while waiting:

So how many do you need? At what point, if you are the one that
dies waiting for ttreatment, does it not matter that a few an be
sacificed?




===========
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. "
=====================
Funny, but since you snipped out what you replied to, it might
seem that way. However, you all you asked was if there were any
medical people worried about waiting times. I just provided one
example.



frtzw906