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Moose Jaw’s MLAs provide their comments on the province’s plan to eliminate the surgery backlog caused by COVID and to permanently hike intensive care unit (ICU) numbers.
The Government of Saskatchewan and Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) announced their plan on Dec. 9 and issued a Request for Information (RFI) to test the market for additional third-party surgical providers. They will publicly fund the use of third-party facilities for day procedures, overnight inpatient surgeries, and post-operative care, including therapies and home care.
The province has recognized that pre-COVID facilities were inadequate and is not intending on returning to pre-COVID numbers. The stated goal is that by 2030, surgery wait times should be three months at most. The province and SHA want 110 ICU beds as well – however, no timeline has been set for that objective.
Moose Jaw Wakamow MLA Greg Lawrence said that “It has shown us that just in case something like this happens again, we need to expand ICU availability. So we’re expanding the ICU beds from 79 to 90 by June 2022. And this is the first step to achieving 110 ICU beds in the province.”
Targets have been set to perform an additional 7,000 surgeries in 2022-23 over and above pre-pandemic levels. Volume targets will grow by an additional 6,000 in 2023-24 and 5,000 in 2024-25.
“Delays in surgeries and medical procedures have taken a heavy toll on quality-of-life for thousands of Saskatchewan patients,” Premier Scott Moe said. “Since March 2020 we know there were a large volume of surgeries that were delayed due to COVID-related surgical slowdowns.”
The emphasis during this catch-up plan will be on procedures with higher numbers of patients dealing with long wait times, including hip and knee replacements, ear/nose/throat, dental, and general surgeries.
To achieve their intentions, the province has made aggressive plans for the return of COVID-redeployed SHA staff to their home positions. SHA facilities will expand operating room hours and make greater use of regional surgical sites. Relationships with private providers will be intensified, allowing for more surgeries and more types of surgeries in private surgical suites.
The province and SHA are also planning on increasing the recruitment and training of healthcare professionals.
Tim McLeod, MLA for Moose Jaw North, said “We’re actively looking to recruit and train healthcare professionals to fill those needs. That can be done both through immigration of trained professionals from outside of Canada, and we’re working together with the Ministries of Health and the Ministry of Advanced Education to ensure that we have the training spaces available to train our own homegrown healthcare professionals to fill that need.”
The Saskatchewan Health Authority has seen turmoil over the last couple of months with the unplanned departures of three of its most senior board members. COO Suann Laurent retired at the end of October without any announcement. CEO Scott Livingstone was fulfilling the COO duties until his abrupt resignation effective Dec. 2.
Board member Dr. Janet Tootoosis, a founding member of the SHA board and its only physician, resigned essentially at the same time as Livingstone. The SHA and Premier Scott Moe have insisted that the resignations are not necessarily related and that no services or plans will be affected.
