One of the key benefits of the UK health system is that everyone has access to care. However, is care provided equally to all people? <\/p>\n
A paper by Matias et al. (2024)<\/a> examines whether or not there are any inequalities in waiting times by socioeconomic status for women diagnosed with breast cancer in England and who require either a mastectomy or breast conserving surgery.\u00a0 The authors use data from Hospital Episode Statistics (HES)<\/a> between 2015 and 2022 to measure wait time between a specialist\u2019s diagnosis and time to surgery. Inequalities are measured based on income deprivation by geographic area [specifically, the Lower Super Output Area (LSOA)<\/a>]. The analysis controls for a variety of patient characteristics as well as hospital fixed effects. <\/p>\n Using this approach, they find that:<\/p>\n In the pre-COVID-19 period, we do not find statistically significant associations between income deprivation in the patient\u2019s area of residence and waiting times for surgery. In the COVID-19 period, we find that patients living in the most deprived areas have longer waiting times by 0.7\u00a0days (given a mean waiting time of 20.6\u00a0days). <\/p>\n