B.C. working to catch up on backlogged surgeries

B.C. is catching up on the thousands of surgeries postponed during the height of COVID-19 with a record number of surgeries last year. However, more than 88,000 people are still waiting for surgery.

A total of 337,560 scheduled and unscheduled surgeries were completed in fiscal year 2021-22, which Health Minister Adrian Dix says is the highest number of surgeries performed in a single year and 21,284 more surgeries than in 2020.

Over that time, health authorities performed 52,216 urgent scheduled surgeries and 34,557 surgeries for patients waiting twice the recommended waiting time.

The province said it has completed 99.8 per cent of the surgeries for patients whose original date was in the first wave of COVID in March 2020, 96.2 per cent of surgeries postponed because of the second and third wave in mid-2021 and 78.9 per cent of surgeries postponed because of the fourth and fifth waves in the fall and winter of 2021, and during last summer's extreme heat that led to almost 600 heat-related deaths.

A total of 88,365 people are still waiting for surgery, including 6,460 waiting for urgent surgery, but the government says that's a decrease of six per cent compared with 2019-20.

To deal with the surgery backlog, health authorities extended operating room times so that more surgeries are conducted in a given day and on the weekends.

Health authorities have been grappling with staff shortages, according to Ministry of Health officials who said surgeries in Creston were impacted after a surgeon retired and a shortage of anesthesiologists on central Vancouver Island caused some surgeries to be delayed.