(rdnewsNOW file photo)

By Troy Gillard

hospital expansion the best solution

Surgeon says province’s plan does little to reduce surgical wait times in Red Deer

Mar 4, 2020 | 5:20 PM

A local surgeon says a plan announced Wednesday by the provincial government aimed at reducing surgical wait times in Alberta will have little impact in Red Deer.

Alberta is spending $100 million to upgrade hospital operating rooms and move some low-risk surgeries to smaller facilities and private clinics. Health Minister Tyler Shandro says that will mean an extra 17,000 surgeries to be done in the 2020-21 fiscal year and about 30,000 more yearly by 2023.

Under the investment, the province says low-risk surgeries will be moved out of the Red Deer Hospital to be offered in Innisfail, Stettler, Ponoka and Olds.

However, Dr. Keith Wolstenholme, a local orthopedic surgeon, points out that’s already been the case for several years.

“We’ve been operating in Olds and Innisfail and Stettler for years. We’ve probably been doing cases in Olds for eight years. So nothing announced today will change in that perspective,” he explained. “The orthopedic surgeons and the urologists already go to Olds, and the plastic surgeons and the ophthalmologist already go to Innisfail. General surgeons already go to Stettler.”

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Also announced Wednesday, the Rocky Mountain House Health Centre will be renovated so it can perform more endoscopy procedures and, according to the province, create more space in the Red Deer hospital to focus on more complex surgeries.

But again, Wolstenholme says that won’t be the case.

“That will probably improve the number (of procedures) being done, but that’s done in a separate spot (at Red Deer Regional). It won’t affect our operating room times,” he noted.

Wolstenholme says the best way to reduce surgical wait times in Red Deer is to expand facilities.

“The only other option is doing publicly-funded surgeries in private facilities. But we don’t have any of those in central zone,” he pointed out.

“We have capacity issues for beds, we have issues with access to OR, we have capacity issues in day OR, those are all big problems that need major infrastructure. Nothing I saw today will fix that.”

Wolstenholme expects that will be part of the discussion as talks get underway for planning the newly-announced $100 million first phase of Red Deer Regional Hospital expansion.