A plan is now in place to get Saskatchewan caught up when it comes to the number of surgeries that have been put on hold due to COVID-19.
The province has announced that beginning in 2022-23, the goal is to perform an additional seven-thousand surgeries over pre-pandemic levels followed by an additional six thousand surgeries in 2023-24 and five thousand in 2024-25.
Health Minister Paul Merriman says there will be an emphasis on surgical procedures with higher numbers of long-waiting patients including knee replacements, dental and general surgeries.
In the province’s plan, there are also provisions to expand capacity in Saskatchewan Health Authority Hospitals and in publicly funded private surgical clinics.
Some of the actions to help with the backlog include expanding operating room hours and making greater use of regional surgical sites. The government will also be issuing a Request for Information seeking if third-party surgical providers would be interested in providing day procedures, overnight inpatient surgeries, and post-operative care including therapies and home care. This would allow the SHA to conduct more complex surgeries.
The plan is to also expand ICU capacity in the province from 79 beds to 90 by June of next year. The health authority will also be adding an additional 10 high-acuity beds in Regina. Those beds are expected to open in the spring.
To accomplish the new goal, the SHA will be recruiting additional nurses and other staff. Saskatchewan Polytech has increased specialized critical care training this year to 144 to help address both short and long-term needs.
Merriman says there are roughly 35 thousand Saskatchewan residents waiting for surgeries in the province.
“Those are for a variety of surgeries. We do also understand that there might be people that might not have been into their general practitioner or their surgeon in a while, so we do understand there might be some surgeries out there that haven’t been identified by the clinician.”
The province wouldn’t provide a dollar figure for how much the costs associated are with seeking private surgery providers and hiring additional nurses. The health minister said the province will make those figures public once they’ve hashed out those numbers.
During Thursday’s briefing, Health Minister Paul Merriman was asked if the departure of Scott Livingstone as CEO of the Saskatchewan Health Authority was political.
“There was no political pressure on that. Scott Livingstone chose to step away from the SHA, as I said in the media yesterday (wed), I thank him very much for him building the SHA over the last five years, bringing it together, but there was no political pressure on him leaving and I wish him certainly the best of luck in his future endeavors.”
The province hopes to achieve a three-month wait time for surgeries by 2030.
