Jason Kenney, Premier of Alberta. (Government of Alberta)

By rdnewsNOW Staff

LOCAL DOCTOR NOT CONCERNED

Province aiming to expand surgery access in central, southern Alberta

Sep 7, 2022 | 1:41 PM

The Alberta government says it is expanding contracts with chartered surgical facilities in central and southern Alberta in hopes of reducing wait times and to deliver about 2,600 more surgeries closer to home.

Part of the Alberta Surgical Initiative, Alberta Health Services (AHS) will schedule 1,350 more surgeries in Central Zone and about 1,250 more procedures in the South, including hip and knee to general surgeries, by inviting chartered surgical facilities to submit proposals.

The government says these procedures should boost publicly funded surgeries in communities such as Red Deer by five per cent. Moving more orthopedic and general surgeries into chartered facilities also frees up operating room space in hospitals to provide more complex surgeries, says the government.

“Albertans are waiting too long for [these] surgeries,” said Premier Jason Kenney on Wednesday. “That’s why we are moving forward with our plan to deliver more surgeries for Albertans closer to their home and within the clinically appropriate period. Alberta’s government remains committed to expanding health-care system capacity and making sure Albertans get much better value for their health-care dollars.”

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Interim AHS president and CEO, Mauro Chies, says patients are at the heart of all its decisions.

“We lmow Albertans want to access care in their communities,” states Chies. “These requests for proposals (RFPs) seek opportunities for procedures in rural and regional areas to improve access, reduce wait times for surgery for patients and help Albertans receive their procedure anywhere in the province that can provide the service quickly and effectively.”

Provincial officials say Alberta Health and AHS have increased surgical capacity in hospitals and the number of surgeries at chartered facilities, which is reportedly already steadily reducing the surgical wait-list.

Budget 2022 provides $133 million over three years to expand and build new operating rooms in hospitals across Alberta, including in Calgary, Edmonton, Edson, Grande Prairie, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat and Rocky Mountain House.

MORE: $1.8 billion for Red Deer hospital expansion

Through RFPs issued last year for chartered surgical facilities in Calgary and Edmonton, AHS is targeting 30,000 ophthalmology surgeries in these facilities this fiscal year. Additionally, AHS is targeting 6,000 orthopedic surgeries in chartered surgical facilities annually, and contracts are being finalized.

The government notes chartered surgical facilities have offered publicly funded surgeries to Albertans since the 1990s. In 2021-22, they say, about 55,000 surgeries were performed in these facilities, or 20 per cent of surgeries, up from 39,000 and 13 per cent in 2019.

The current surgical wait-list sits at eight per cent above pre-pandemic levels, with about 73,750 adults, compared to 68,000 in Feb. 2020.

On Sept. 7, the government notes, AHS will issue two RFPs for the Central and South zones.

“Albertans can not trust the UCP with their healthcare,” NDP Leader Rachel Notley retorted today.

“Right now, dozens of hospitals are partially closed across the province. We’ve seen 14-hour waits at the Red Deer emergency room and patients sprawled out on the floor of the Misericordia waiting rooms because there is no doctor to see them. There are also serious shortages in our ambulance system and doctors’ offices.

“Privatizing health care will make the situation worse by taking scarce resources and staff away from our struggling public system. The UCP have modelled their plan on the Saskatchewan Surgical Initiative, which has failed. Wait times for surgeries in Saskatchewan are now longer than when the initiative first began.”

In a statement, Friends of Medicare executive director Chris Gallaway called the UCP’s pursuit of supposed savings, “myopic,” and the announcement a, “privatization scheme.”

“At the end of the day, this is about securing more profits for private health care operators,” says Gallaway. It’s appalling that this government is trying to capitalize on the pandemic backlog in an attempt to justify their privatization agenda.”

One Red Deer doctor, however, doesn’t see the news quite as negatively.

“If this was a first step toward privatization, then yeah, I’d be very leary and wary of it, but I don’t think that’s the intention, nor how it’ll be delivered. Is it different? Sure,” admits orthopedic surgeon Dr. Keith Wolstenholme.

“It needs to be done and vetted properly, we need to ensure standards of practice are upheld, but if you were to tell me my choice is a chartered surgical facility or continue status quo, well we know we can’t continue status quo because we don’t have enough resources. We’re not doing a great job of taking care of people right now, so we need something.”

What he says will be the real challenge is staffing these facilities when it’s already difficult to do so with existing ones. Thus, nursing enrolment, plus the recruitment and retention of physicians is vital.

“Anything that improves surgical access is good. We’ve faced a long-term infrastructure deficit, meaning less than ideal access to surgical care. If this goes through as proposed, we’ll have more access for patients in central Alberta, and that’s a good thing obviously,” says Wolstenholme.

“There are roadblocks with staffing, but in theory, it’s a great idea. The important thing to understand is that this isn’t pay for private medicine. This is still publicly funded, and patients are not paying out of pocket.”

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