The arrival of the pandemic in Chile in 2020 led to the postponement of elective surgeries by prioritizing hospital beds in Covid-19 patients.
Currently, despite President Gabriel Boric’s investment of $35 billion to improve hospital care, government efforts have failed to bring waiting lists to pre-pandemic levels.
In this regard, the Minister of Health, Ximena Aguilera, pointed out about the government’s strategies to solve this issue that “no health system has been oblivious to the impact of the pandemic. 2019 is considered the last normal year of service production, and from 2020-2021 we had the greatest impact (…) and the summer of 2022 there was also a lot of pandemic activity.”
The minister explained that one of the strategies they have followed to reduce the waiting list was to increase the production of the health system.
“We have operations running on Saturdays and Sundays, we have extended hours, there is a special budget for that that has been running since last year,” he explained. Added to this are the Regional Resolution Centers (CRR), which improve the productivity of resources by reducing procedures and making them more efficient before surgery.
Another strategy that they have followed is to make the information transparent. “We’re working on some interactive viewers so people know what they’re waiting for. We are going to make it known to the public soon, ”she said. With these viewers, people will be able to see where they are on the waiting list and update their details.
Likewise, the minister highlighted that in the years of greatest closure due to the pandemic (2020 to 2021), the average wait was 700 days, 670 for surgical interventions and a similar amount for specialty care.
Instead, “today we are in less than 400 days, even less than a year, which was our commitment,” he said.
“It’s difficult to reduce or completely eliminate waiting lists because health systems typically operate on a waiting list.” As a government, they expect waiting list times “to be reasonable and timely, and we are working on that.”
“Although we have managed to reduce effectively, we have not yet managed to recover the production of a full pre-pandemic year, but we hope to achieve it this year, and yet we have managed to reduce the times in an accelerated manner,” he closed.
