Socioeconomic inequalities in waiting times for breast cancer surgery

Maria Ana Matias, Rita Santos, Luigi Siciliani, Peter Sivey and Andrew Proctor

Health Economics, 2025, vol. 34, issue 2, 203-224

Abstract: Prompt access to cancer care is a policy priority in several OECD countries, because delayed access can exacerbate deleterious health outcomes. Access to care based on need remains a key pillar of publicly‐funded health systems. This study tests for the presence of inequalities in waiting times by socioeconomic status for patients receiving breast cancer surgery (mastectomy or breast conserving surgery) in England using the Hospital Episode Statistics. We investigate separately the pre‐COVID‐19 period (April 2015–January 2020), and the COVID‐19 period (February 2020–March 2022). We use linear regression models to study the association between waiting times and income deprivation measured at the patient's area of residence. We control for demographic factors, type and number of comorbidities, past emergency admissions and Healthcare Resource Groups, and supply‐level factors through hospital fixed effects. In the pre‐COVID‐19 period, we do not find statistically significant associations between income deprivation in the patient's 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 days (given a mean waiting time of 20.6 days).

Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.4906

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:34:y:2025:i:2:p:203-224

Access Statistics for this article

Health Economics is currently edited by Alan Maynard, John Hutton and Andrew Jones

More articles in Health Economics from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().