Health officials in British Columbia say they have caught up on more than half of the surgeries that were cancelled in mid-march at the peak of COVID-19 restrictions.
Fifty-two per cent of the patients who missed their surgeries had the procedures completed between May 18 and June 25, Health Minister Adrian Dix said during a news conference today.
“Given the period we were starting from, [that’s an] extraordinary accomplishment,” he said, noting that success comes on the backs of the province hiring more staff and increasing operating-room hours to catch up on cancelled surgeries.
He now believes that the surgery backlog can be cleared in 15 months, not the two years that was initially estimated.
More than 32,400 people either had their surgeries postponed or not scheduled at all in order to free up hospital beds in case there was a rush of COVID-19 patients earlier in the year. When combined with patients who were already on wait lists, the number of people waiting for procedures ballooned to about 93,000.
According to Dix, 62,744 patients have already been contacted to reschedule their surgeries since things resumed on May 18. The overall wait time rose 26 per cent between mid-March to mid-May, and the province is prioritizing urgent surgeries, especially for people who have already been waiting two times longer than normal.
Health officials also plan to expedite training, open new and unused spaces, and turn to private clinics, while also asking surgeons to work longer hours over the next four months — including on weekends and through the summer. The province estimates it lost more than 14,505 operating hours in 2019 due to the ‘summer slowdown’ caused by staff vacation and reduced hours.
This summer’s slowdown though is expected to be reduced by 52 per cent by managing employees’ vacations.
“I can tell you from experience, we tried many times to increase surgeries in the summer, and it’s hard to do,” Michael Marchbank, the former president and CEO of Fraser Health Authority, who is consulting with the province said. “I don’t want to say that everything is going to be perfect, because I don’t think it is. There’s a lot of hard work ahead of us. We have to address these issues to fulfill surgical renewal commitment.”
A five-step plan released in early May 7 said the government plans to hire more staff like surgeons, nurses, and anesthesiologists, along with all of the 1,550 nurses graduating from the province’s nursing schools this year, to help work through the backlog.
Dix notes that work is underway, with $815,000 set aside since May for recruitment. As previously noted, the cost for this year alone to make up the backlog of elective surgeries will be $250-million dollars, with nearly 75 per cent of that money spent on staffing.
