Ibizans have to wait more than five months to see a specialist at Can Misses. Furthermore, the average of 160.33 days that Ibizan patients wait for this appointment is three times longer than the waits recorded in other hospitals in the Balearic Islands.
In Formentera, this period is around 89.05 days on average. According to the latest data released by the Balearic Islands Health Service (Ib-Salut) regarding the waiting list for outpatient clinics, in Can Misses there were a total of 17,411 patients registered in mid-July, while in the Formentera hospital there were 387 users.
In Mallorcan hospitals such as Son Espases, around the same time, 18,768 patients were awaiting a consultation with a specialist. Those users who had to wait more than 60 days for one of these visits amounted to 11,681 people in the case of Can Misses and 188 in relation to Formentera.
In hospitals such as Son Espases in Mallorca, the delay was 49.57 days, while it rose to 61.11 days in the case of Son Llàtzer and 67.24 days in the Menorca hospital. As for the surgical waiting lists, according to the latest data from Ib-Salut, in mid-July in Can Misses there were 1,433 patients waiting for an operation and another 14 people in Formentera. A total of 177 users waited more than 180 days in the Ibizan hospital for an operation.
Regarding the average waiting time for surgery, the latest data indicated that the delay was 96.1 days in Ibiza and 34.5 days in Formentera. Recently, the Ibiza Health Department highlighted the “progressive reduction” of the surgical waiting list with a 35.5% decrease in the number of patients waiting for an operation in Ibiza hospitals in one year.
Thus, by June 2023 there were 2,339 people waiting for an operation, compared to the nearly 1,500 users counted in June 2024. Health sources highlighted that the average delay for an operation had also been reduced by 36.5%.
Causes
An increase in activity and a more efficient use of operating theatres are two of the basic issues that have made it possible to achieve these figures, according to the Health Department. As for scheduled surgical activity, it had increased by 9%, going from 2,630 operations in the first six months of 2023 to 2,862 interventions in the first half of this year. Overall surgical activity also grew by 6%, with 3,539 operations recorded from January to June 2024 compared to 3,339 in the same period of the previous year.
