Red Deer Regional Hospital (rdnewsNOW file photo)

By Sheldon Spackman

healthcare

Province’s plan won’t help surgical wait times in Red Deer: Surgeon

Dec 10, 2019 | 6:09 PM

A local surgeon is pleased to see the province taking steps to reduce surgical wait times, but feels there will be no direct benefit for patients at Red Deer Regional Hospital.

Dr. Paul Hardy says that while he was on-call last week, access for emergency surgery in Red Deer was the most challenging he’s seen in over a decade.

“On one day we had 41 people waiting for emergency surgery,” recalls Hardy. “Virtually everybody who was getting emergency surgery, who was getting a longer than desirable wait time, in order to get the wait list down, at least eight elective surgeries were cancelled. They will be done at a later date, possibly weeks or months down the road.”

On Tuesday, the UCP government announced the Alberta Surgical Wait-Times Initiative it says will provide up to 80,000 more publicly funded surgeries over the next four years.

Health Minister Tyler Shandro says Alberta will have the best wait-time performance in Canada by building more operating rooms and using more private clinics as recommended in the MacKinnon Report.

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Shandro says a funding model is still being developed and will take its cue from a third-party review on healthcare delivery that is to be delivered to the government before the end of the month.

As more surgeries become available in the community, government officials say hospitals will be able to focus on emergencies and more-complex surgeries. All medically necessary surgeries, the province says, will be fully covered under Alberta’s public healthcare system.

However, Hardy feels the plan doesn’t appear to help central Albertans get the care they need closer to home.

“When there has been a glaring deficiency in the resources for central Albertans getting access to surgical care for over a decade and when it’s hitting even more critical levels, this solution doesn’t seem to me to be getting at the root problem for central Albertans,” he exclaims. “It may be a good step provincially, but it tends to gloss over and ignore the needs of central Albertans. But anything they can do to get people into surgery in a more timely manner, it’s welcome.”

Hardy feels local administration in Red Deer is doing an excellent job at managing with the resources available in Red Deer.

“I have nothing but praise for what our Red Deer AHS administrative personnel are doing to support us.”

Hardy says the root problem is a per capita funding shortfall for facilities and programs throughout Central Zone.

“Fund expansion of the hospital and fund programs in an equivalent manner to what’s being funded in Edmonton and Calgary and throughout the province. In per capita expenditures, we’ve fallen short for a long, long time.”

Dr. Keith Wolstenholme, Orthopedic Surgeon at Central Alberta Orthopedics in Red Deer, adds, “This will likely not impact our local surgical wait lists very much. It’s a great idea if done properly though, and a good start to reducing province wide surgical waitlists.”