High demand leads to longer elective surgery wait times
Elective surgery wait times will likely increase in the Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region (RQHR) because a growing population and demand for procedures is outstripping provincial funding.
For the past 10 years, a major challenge has been providing services to an increasing number of people, said Keith Dewar, the region’s CEO.
Dewar noted surgery waits increased over the past year primarily because “the funding volumes that we had didn’t match the increase in demand.”
“I anticipate a similar circumstance this year,” he said.
The demand for surgical services last year was particularly high, Dewar said.
“Once things stabilize, we may see less demand growth there, but in places where there are elective procedures that we don’t have the funding to address, we’ll probably see wait times grow some,” Dewar said.
He spoke to media Thursday morning after the public meeting of the Regina Qu’Appelle Regional Health Authority on Wednesday night. At the meeting, the board approved the 2017-18 budget, which has a projected $17.5-million deficit.
Dewar noted the RQHR trimmed its 2016-17 deficit from $24 million to $3.5 million.
In a billion-dollar budget, that’s less than a half-per cent off, he said.
“It would have been nice to be balanced and that was our objective, but we were close,” he said. “It actually helps us going into this year to have carried forward a fairly small deficit.”
With the move to a single provincial health authority in the fall, the salary for RQHR’s CEO and board charges were not part of budget planning.
“The rest was more a broader transfer of what was left over after basically six months of us — the RQHR — being responsible for the budget and then the new Saskatchewan Health Authority being responsible for the budget,” Dewar said.
The province tabled a “fairly challenging ” budget in March for all organizations that receive government funding, he said.
While keeping costs in check, the region has used attrition to keep job losses at a minimum. The health region has an attrition rate of eight per cent, which means about 800 people leave each year.
“If there are layoffs, it would hopefully occur that they get opportunities across the organization,” Dewar said.
In terms of emergency room waits, progress has been made by providing services in the community, which is relieving some pressure in the ERs.
For example, resources have been provided to community physicians so they can better diagnose and treat patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and prevent them from requiring emergency intervention.
The Regina Qu’Appelle, Saskatoon and Prince Albert health regions will receive the bulk of the $12 million allocated in the provincial budget to address ER wait times.
In the wide-ranging interview, Dewar said a transition team has been working for months to set up the new single provincial health authority, but much work remains.
Many management positions, which includes CEOs and the senior leadership teams, will be eliminated by the fall. But more broadly, he said, the challenge will be connecting people from across the province into one organization.
“Both on the corporate side, the people who support the financial activity — payroll and processing — to the clinical work that we do — it basically touches every part of this organization, every part of the health-care system,” he said.
Until the new provincial health authority is operational, there continues to be a great deal of confusion and uncertainty among employees, Dewar said.
“That’s to be understood because as we all know, when there’s uncertainty in your professional life, it does carry over to your personal life as well,” he said.
It’s also an exciting time, as 12 regional health authorities merge into one, Dewar said.
He supports going to one health authority, but said it’s important that doesn’t mean centralization.