Uuh... like, wow.

CBC News reports on a ridiculously successful pilot project in Alberta: in an effort to reduce waiting times for hip and knee surgeries, the provincial government kicked in $20 million -- a pittance, really -- to hire some extra staff while "a consortium of private doctors" associated with the Alberta Bone and Joint Health Institute worked out a streamlined triage system in order to better assess patients' needs. The results speak for themselves:

The numbers show patients waited just six weeks on average from the time they had a complaint to the time they saw a specialist. The normal wait time is nine months. And the time between seeing a surgeon to the operation was reduced to about seven weeks from 11 months.

The study concludes in April 2006, so I'll reserve judgment until then, but it certainly sounds promising. Granted, no individual costs are discussed in the article, so this may be prohibitively expensive for the average citizen. Regardless, I'm curious to see the final results of the project, as well as Health Canada's assessment of its viability.

The full story may be found here.