Waiting time

The latest issue of Social Science and Medicine offers two pieces of research that consider inequalities acute care provision. Do the poor cost much more? looks at whether healthcare reform in the UK designed to incentivise reducing waiting lists and length of stay for elective surgery had adversely affected poorer patients (not much, the article's authors suggest). An earlier study in the BMJ made similar findings. Socioeconomic inequalities in the diffusion of health technology takes as an example uptake of coronary procedures in Western Australia. Here, the authors find some evidence that more well-off patients received coronary artery bypass surgery and angiography earlier.