B.C. has $250M plan to resume surgeries
Province will hire more staff, extend operating room hours to deal with COVID cancellations
VICTORIA — B.C. will need up to two years to clear the backlog of 30,298 non-urgent surgeries postponed because of COVID-19.
Health Minister Adrian Dix called the province’s plan to do that a “hugely ambitious” undertaking. Even if it is successful, it still won’t dent B.C.’s typically long waiting times for surgery.
On Thursday, he announced $250 million a year to hire extra staff and extend operating room hours to tackle surgeries that were cancelled during the coronavirus pandemic.
Almost half of those were for cataracts and for hip and knee replacements.
“It’s an enormous challenge,” said Dix.
“Because we have people on a wait list already, this simply adds to that and presents a real challenge for the system.
“But I think we’re up to addressing it. We’re going to throw everything we have at this issue because I think the people who have made a real sacrifice in seeing their surgeries delayed, those people deserve that.”
More than 17,000 surgeries for things like heart attacks, cancer and trauma injuries went ahead in recent weeks.
But B.C. postponed 14,000 scheduled non-urgent surgeries since March and another 16,000 that would have been scheduled in that period.
The surgical waiting list has 93,000 patients, once the recent cancellations are added to cases not referred by specialists during the pandemic and to the existing backlog.
The surgery cancellations were designed to clear thousands of hospital beds in case a surge of COVID-19 cases overwhelmed the health care system, as in Italy and New York state. But that surge has not happened in B.C., primarily because people stayed home and practised physical-distancing.
The first step in resuming non-urgent surgeries will be to call people on waiting lists during the next 10 days to ask if they are comfortable having a procedure during the pandemic. The risk of transmission on the operating table is low and rapid screening is now in place, health officials said Thursday.
B.C. will give priority to patients who need surgeries in fewer than four weeks, patients who had their surgeries postponed and people who have waited more than twice the benchmark for their procedures.
Health authorities will extend operating room hours into the evenings and weekends, open old operating rooms, and continue to pay for surgeries at private facilities, said Dix.
Catching up would require many health care workers to forgo summer holidays. And Dix said the system needs to make up for an almost 30 per cent loss in productivity caused by the extra safety steps, including putting on and taking off the protective gear required to prevent COVID-19 transmission.
The government will ask part-timers among its 2,404 operating room nurses to work full time.
It also hopes to keep the 1,131 nurses who came out of retirement during the crisis.
Dix also said the entire graduating class of 1,550 nurses in B.C. this year will be offered full-time jobs and another 400 post-anesthesia care nurses will be hired.
It will be difficult given operating room jobs require experience and some nurses do not want to work full time, said Christine Sorensen, president of the B.C. Nurses’ Union. “This plan is very important for the patients,” she said.
Surgeons generally praised the proposal.
“We think the government put in place a reasonable plan,” said Sam Bugis, vice-president of Doctors of B.C. and a general surgeon.
“I would say that the surgeons I’ve spoken to, including myself, we’re used to working long hours, we’re used to giving up some weekends and we’re anxious to get looking after these patients who have unfortunately had to wait.”