Thanks to the Saskatchewan Surgical Initiative that was started in 2010, patients are close to waiting no more than three months for a surgery.
“We’re in a very enviable place in Saskatchewan when you look across Canada,” said Health Minister Dustin Duncan in a press conference. “We have an 89 per cent reduction in the number of people waiting longer than three months for a surgery … Within six months, we’re closer to 99 per cent of people being offered surgery.”
As of March 31, seven of the 10 health regions that offer surgery have no patients waiting longer than three months for surgery. The Regina Qu’Appelle and Saskatoon health regions are still unable to due to unexpectedly high demand and the type of surgeries.
“In Saskatoon, it’s a different case because of the high number of patients that are waiting for one surgeon that we have in the province,” said Duncan. “It’s good because we’re doing those surgeries closer to home, but those people are waiting longer.”
Those statistics have been attributed to a variety of factors such an online specialist directory, pooled referrals, established clinical “pathways,” increased capacity for training operating room nurses, and the use of third-party surgical and diagnostic services.
Many of those factors were funded with the $300 million the provincial government invested into the surgical initiative, not including the $50 million stipulated in this year’s budget. Those dollars also covered surgeries done in the private sector.
“Over 35,000 surgeries have been done in the private sector using public dollars,” said Duncan. “They were publicly scheduled, publicly administered, and publicly paid for.”
Considering the wait reduction the government has been able to accomplish thus far, they’ve also starting cutting day beds at the Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region so as to better allocate those resources. With fewer people waiting for surgery, there’s less need for short-term stay beds.
“This is actually a success of the surgical initiative,” said Duncan. “What we’re seeing is this year, we’re close to being in the first year where the numbers of people requiring surgery is the number of people that surgery is actually being provided for, so we’re really getting through that backlog of people.”
The Saskatchewan government also invested $1.7 million last year in the emergency department initiative aimed at reducing emergency department wait times. However, it’s only in the early stages of the initiative.
“It’s going to take a lot of investment, but it’s also going to take looking at different ways of providing services,” said Duncan. “Our goal initially was to have no waits in the emergency department by 2017 … We have a team that is looking at how to reduce wait times in the emergency department … but we’re going to have to judge our progress each and every year until we reach that date to determine if it’s going to take longer than 2017 or not.”
Duncan said it’s not so much what’s happening in the emergency department that’s causing problems and long waits; it’s what’s going on around the department. As such, they’ll be focusing their attention and resources on things such as the hotspotting program, the seniors house call program, and improving access to primary health care.
“There is a whole host of initiatives under the ED (emergency department) waits that actually aren’t within the ED that I think will have some positive results.”
Duncan acknowledged that are also some things in the emergency department that they have to improve on. As such, Regina is currently working on reducing the amount of time it takes for someone to get an initial assessment by a physician and then leave the emergency department.
