New York City Reports Long Delays for Mammograms
A recent audit of nine NYC’s Health and Hospitals Corporation found City Comptroller Liu described as dangerous delays in women’s health care. It takes too long for women to get screening and diagnostic mammograms.
The 2009 audit found women at Elmhurst Hospital had the longest waits – 50 working days (that would be 10 weeks, i.e. 2.5 months) for diagnostic mammograms, on average. You can find more details here.
According to the Times’ coverage:
Ana Marengo, a spokeswoman for the city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs the public health system, said that the comptroller’s data was outdated…
At Elmhurst, she said, the wait as of December 2010 was 20 days for screening and 23 days for a general diagnostic test, as opposed to an urgent one.
Still, at Queens Hospital Center, the wait for a screening test was 56 days in December <2010>, Ms. Marengo said. “It’s due to volume and higher demand,” she said. “We only have a certain amount of resources.”
From the comptroller’s press release, a statement from Alice Yaker, Executive Director, of SHARE: Self-help for Women with Breast or Ovarian Cancer:
“While controversies about efficacy surround the screening of healthy women, there is no controversy about the need for a diagnostic mammogram in a woman who presents with a lump in her breast, for example. This requires our urgent attention, budget cuts and hospital closings notwithstanding.”
The comptroller’s message says there’s no guideline for how soon a woman with breast cancer symptoms, such as a lump, should receive a diagnostic mammogram. For screening, guidelines suggest the wait be no longer than 14 days for an appointment.
This blogger’s vote: set up a maximum wait time for diagnostic mammography: 10 working days.
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