A woman in New York must wait an average of more than a month until she can get a mammogram, an examination crucial to the early detection of breast cancer; the delays are revealed in a study carried out by the office of Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner, representing Brooklyn and Queens.
Breast cancer is the main cause of death among Latinas in the United States.
Brooklyn is the borough with the longest average wait, at 7.4 weeks. It is followed by the Bronx, with a wait of 5.5 weeks; Queens and Staten Island, with average waits of 4.2 weeks; and finally Manhattan, where women must wait an average of 3.7 weeks.
“The life span of a woman with breast cancer can be extended if the disease is diagnosed in time, so it is unacceptable that we see this much delay,” said Brooklyn Borough Vice President Yvonne Graham, who is also the founder of the Caribbean Women's Health Association.
“We Latinas in the United States are the principal victims of this disease, and the government has the duty to respond to this situation,” stated Congresswoman Nydia Velásquez (D-NY, 12th), who supported the study.
The study, which analyzed 25 mammography centers in the city, discovered that in the worst cases, some assistance centers could have delays of up to six months before seeing a patient, while at others an appointment could be made from one day to the next.
“The anxiety level when you're waiting for a diagnosis is very high, and so long a wait can be devastating for a patient who is suffering from this disease,” said Dr. David Dershaw, director of the mammography center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Clinic.
In spite of the fact that New York has the second-highest incidence of the illness in the entire country, the number of clinics in the city that do mammography exams has dropped since 1999.
“There are many reasons which explain this, but the basic problem is that the rate of Medicare reimbursement to hospitals for this exam has gotten lower and lower,” said Weiner.
The average cost for a mammogram today is between $100 and $125, of which the national health system reimburses hospitals only $83.
Weiner said that he will introduce legislation this week to raise the rate of reimbursement for 2009 by 15 percent, which is to say that the rate will cover some $95 of the total exam cost.
In New York State, each year 14,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer and 3,000 die of the disease.
