New documents show full wait for cataract surgery in Winnipeg averages 11 months

Winnipeggers are waiting as long as two years from referral for cataract surgery, a far cry from the median nine-week wait time currently touted by the provincial government, according to documents obtained by CBC News.

Monthly cataract clearance rate reports obtained by CBC through freedom of information laws show it is taking patients anywhere from three months to two years to complete the surgery once the wait time to get their first consultation is taken into account.

CBC obtained 30 months of reports, from January 2022 to June of this year. The reports detail the ophthalmologists available to do cataract surgery in Winnipeg, the time it takes to get a consultation with that ophthalmologist and the average time it takes to complete the surgery.

The reports show that Winnipeggers are waiting an average of 11 months as of this June for cataract surgery, when the wait for an initial consultation is included in that time.

They also reveal the wait is greatly influenced by which doctor a patient is referred to.

While some doctors' average wait time is as short as three months, nine surgeons have a wait time of over a year, and two of those surgeons have a wait time of over 20 months.

'Don't mislead people'

Hedley Duffield, 81, waited almost a year and a half to get his cataract surgery. He wants more transparency when it comes to how the government reports wait times.

"Don't mislead people, saying they're [cataract surgeries] being done in eight to nine weeks when they're not," he said.

Duffield's saga started in March 2023, when he was referred to an ophthalmologist for surgery. Over seven months later, he got his first consultation and was told it would be another six to eight months before he got surgery.

As his eyes began to deteriorate and it got closer to that date, he was told it would be a further year before he'd get the surgery. 

Duffield was confused, because news articles and the province's official dashboard kept saying it would take around nine weeks, and he was waiting more than a year. 

"I Googled the wait times for surgery in Manitoba and looking at the numbers that they had there, and they just didn't add up in my estimation," he said. 

He switched surgeons and was looking forward to surgery in the summer when he got swept up in a spat between Manitoba Health and Vision Group over contracts.

CBC reported in July that doctors performing cataract surgery out of Vision Group were forced to postpone surgeries because the private facility's publicly funded surgery allotment was reduced. 

After being told the surgery wouldn't happen until March 2025, Duffield finally had his surgery in August, after there was a cancellation.

"And the improvement is just fantastic," he said of his life after the surgery.

Emily Coutts, a spokesperson for Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara, said waiting for a consultation, when you're already anticipating a wait for surgery, is "challenging."

Coutts blamed the wait on cuts under the previous government. Following the spat with Vision Group, a further 500 surgeries were added to Vision Group's allotment, she said.

The province's dashboard, which includes all of Manitoba and hasn't been updated since May, lists the current median wait time as nine weeks, but it does not include the wait time to get a consultation with an ophthalmologist. It only counts the time from the consultation to the surgery's completion.

The cataract clearance reports paint a different picture.

The documents show the full median wait for cataract surgery, including the wait for a consultation with a surgeon, was just over a year in 2022. The median wait is the mid-point in the wait times, so half of the rest of the patients wait longer and half wait less time.

The median wait was reduced to just over nine months in 2023 and has remained steady at 10 months for April, May and June of this year. 

The median wait just to get a consultation was just over six months as of June, which is in line with the past 30 months.

However, the clearance time, which is calculated using the number of cases waiting divided by the average number of monthly surgeries completed, has been significantly reduced since 2022.

On average, it took just over six months after the consultation with the patient for the surgeon to complete the surgery in 2022. By 2023, it was only taking 3½ months. This year, it is taking just over three months. 

Optometrists can access reports

The public doesn't see these reports, but every optometrist in Winnipeg can access and use them to inform patients about each surgeon's wait time, local optometrist Carmen Recksiedler said.

Often patients come in with a surgeon already in mind because a family member may have had that doctor. 

"If it is a surgeon who happens to have a long wait time, we notify them," said Recksiedler, who is an optometrist at Visual Eyes Optometry.

"We go over the clearance rate time results … and we might try and direct them to a shorter wait time."

Recksiedler, whose office makes about 10 to 15 cataract referrals a week, said she has noticed an increase in wait times lately, but they are still ahead of the initial post-pandemic levels.

"So that's a plus, but there is a moderate wait time for cataract surgery," she said. 

Some surgeons' wait times go up and down depending on their surgery load, Recksiedler said. When she sees a surgeon is busy, she tries to redirect a patient to another surgeon. 

A spokesperson for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority said the difference in wait times between surgeons can also be affected by the ophthalmologist's specialty.

Patients needing cataract surgery can choose which surgeon they are referred to and ask their optometrist for a surgeon with a shorter wait time, the spokesperson said.