WATERLOO REGION - Long waits for surgery and medical treatment cost Canadians almost $1 billion in lost time and productivity, according to a new study.

But a University of Waterloo professor says the cost would be even greater to lower those wait times for non-urgent issues among a fraction of Canadians.

"It's reasonable to say people with acute, life-threatening conditions . that they would get faster access to surgery," said Prof. John Hirdes of UW's School of Public Health and Health Systems. "That's a reasonable way to allocate limited resources."

A report released Thursday by the Fraser Institute, an independent, right-of-centre think-tank on Canadian public policy, calculated the average value of work time lost was $1,129 for each of the estimated 870,462 patients waiting for treatment after an appointment with a specialist in 2012.

That cost grew substantially when hours outside work were factored in, reaching $3,447 per patient to more than $3 billion in total. And the author of The Private Cost of Public Queues for Medically Necessary Care added that doesn't include the cost of care provided by family members.

"Canadians face some of the longest waits for health care in the developed world. This creates unnecessary pain and suffering for patients and their families and reduces their ability to participate fully in their lives," said Nadeem Esmail, Fraser Institute director of health policy studies and author of the study, in a release.

The average wait was 9.3 weeks from a specialist appointment to treatment, for a combined total weight of 10.6 million weeks, the report said. That average wait time was down from 9.5 weeks in the previous year, and they varied significantly between provinces and specialties.

"We know it would be unrealistic for wait times to be zero," Hirdes said.

He said the important issues to consider are not the economic cost of waiting, as was the focus of this study, but rather what is a reasonable length and how much money should go to reducing wait times?

"It's all a balancing act," Hirdes said. "How much would they have to pay to have a reduced wait time?"

The Canadian Institute for Health Information calculated Canada spent about 12 per cent of its GDP on health care last year - equal to about $5,900 a Canadian, he said. In the United States, health care costs reach 18 per cent.

To get shorter wait times like the U.S. would require spending $8,850 per Canadian. Would Canadians want to pay another $3,000 in taxes to reduce wait times for the 2.5 per cent of the population who were waiting for medical treatment in the study?

While wait times are shorter in the States, the country pays more for health care and not everybody is covered. Canada's universal system has longer waits, but everybody gets care and, as the report shows, people in dire need can depend on quick treatment.

"The urgent conditions have very short wait times," Hirdes said.

Urgent cardiovascular surgery patients waited 0.8 weeks on average in Canada, and medical oncology patients wait 1.7. Also, Hirdes pointed out that Ontario scored remarkably well on wait times.

"Ontario is constantly outperforming the national trends," Hirdes said. "That aspect of it actually is a positive story."

Internal medicine treatments took 4.4 weeks in Ontario, half the national average of 8.8. Plastic surgery waits were 9.4 weeks in Ontario, compared to the national average of 17.2. The specialty with the longest wait was orthopedic surgery, yet still Ontario was shorter at 17.9 weeks, compared to the 19.6 Canada-wide wait.

Progress is also being made on reducing wait times for non-urgent patients, Hirdes said.

In this region, non-emergency surgical wait times have been reduced by more than half over the past six years and local residents are now getting cancer, cataract and cardiac surgeries within the time recommended by clinical experts, said Toni Lemon, chief strategy officer of the Waterloo Wellington Local Health Integration Network.

Hirdes questioned the report's methodology to calculate the economic costs.

"They make lots of leaps of faith," he said. "In the end, I don't think their economic conclusions are valid."

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It's assumed all the patients were in the workforce and even though retired people often contribute through volunteer work, that doesn't have the same economic impact as paid work. Many orthopedic patients would be seniors awaiting hip and knee replacements, and that was one of the largest groups of waiting patients.

As well, the type of surgery or treatment is not taken into consideration even though all surgeries don't have the same effect on a person's ability to work, quality of life or health, he said. Consider cataract surgery compared to cancer surgery.

"Not all the surgeries they're talking about have an equal impact on quality of life and mortality."