Province investing $618M to address surgery backlog
As part of Alberta's 2024 budget, the province is promising a total of $618 million toward combating a surgical backlog.
While relief will be seen across the province, the help is largely concentrated in southern Alberta.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Health Minister Adriana Lagrange said $313 million will go toward the Alberta Surgical Initiative Capital Program (ASI) to increase the number of surgeries performed by opening new operating rooms, renovating spaces and purchasing new equipment. Another $305 million is being given to Alberta Health Services to perform 310,000 surgeries in 2024.
“We should not be seeing discrepancies in health care delivery or in the quality of care across the province and every Albertan should be able to access surgical care within clinically recommended timelines. Our government is
working to refocus the health care system to prioritize patients and improve the delivery of services in every corner of the province,” Lagrange said.
“Albertans deserve reliable health care and a new integrated system will improve patient outcomes and better support our world class health care professionals, but it will take time and while we continue to engage with Albertans and advance our refocusing efforts, we need to take immediate steps to boost capacity, reduce wait times and find efficiencies to address the existing surgical backlog.”
As of March 17, there had been 293,150 surgeries completed in 2023-24.
The $313 million going toward ASI over a three-year period is meant to increase and improve the capacity of health facilities. Areas such as Edmonton, Calgary, Brooks, Crowsnest Pass, Innisfail, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Olds, Rocky Mountain House and Taber will see renovations to surgical suites and other support.
Health care professionals across the province have raised issues of burnout and staffing shortages in health care facilities. When Lagrange was asked how confident she is that there would be enough staff to perform surgeries, she said they have the staff.
“My understanding is that we do have the staff in place. Obviously, there are certain aspects of staffing of th workforce that are more challenging than others, particularly around anesthesia. AHS has been working diligently to recruit more anesthesiologists across the province and there's additional work being done in that area,” Lagrange said.
Dr. Paul Parks, president of the Alberta Medical Association, said while it's good the province is trying to do some prospective planning and budgeting around the surgical backlog, he is “deeply concerned” over the province's lack of acknowledgment of workforce challenges.
He said he is hearing from general surgeons in Calgary that they are concerned that they're going to be impacted and unable to deliver safe and timely surgeries due to the shortage of staff, including the lack of anesthesiologists and surgical assistant nurse practitioners, among other health care workers.
“It's very good to try to decrease those wait lists, but we also are really struggling with our acute care. We have a lot of operating rooms in our hospitals that are sitting empty,” Parks said.
Luanne Metz, health critic for the Opposition NDP, raised concerns about the lack of data available when it comes to surgeries and the workforce available to take on the surgical backlog. She said she wants to know if there has been “careful analysis” to know whether there will be an appropriate workforce in the operating room.
“Workforce is one of the biggest issues in health care these days. We know that many, many rural locations are not able to keep their in-patient beds open. They're not able to staff their emergencies, they're not able to provide obstetric care and to now be looking at them doing more surgeries,” Metz said.