Sask. announces medical service resumptions, ICU capacity expansion plans

Saskatchewan's health minister laid out plans for resuming medical services to eliminate the COVID-19 surgical backlog Thursday.

Short and long-term targets to expand intensive care capacity in the province were also announced.

The plan will include new measures affecting both hospitals and "publicly funded private surgical clinics".

Budgetary implications of these actions are not known at this time but are being worked on as part of the budgeting process.

To eliminate the backlog that occurred during the pandemic, a target has been set to perform an additional 7,000 surgeries in 2022-23 over pre-pandemic levels. Targets will grow by an additional 6,000 in 2023-24 and 5,000 in 2024-25.

Priority will be given to procedures with the most long-waiting patients like hip and knee replacements, ear, nose and throat surgeries as well as dental and general surgeries.

Operating room hours will be expanded to accommodate these goals and regional surgical sites will also see more traffic.

“Building on existing contracts with private surgical providers, additional surgeries and more types of surgeries will be performed through third-party contracts,” the province said in a news release.

Paul Merriman said Thursday at an update from the Provincial Emergency Operations Centre that the moves will be backed up by increased efforts to get more frontline staff in the workforce through seat capacity increases for health care programs at post-secondary institutions, international recruiting and more.

"We're complimenting that with additional human resources that are coming online, some that are graduating from the colleges and universities around the province but also our recruitment," said Merriman. "So this is our plan on a go-forward basis in order to make sure we can achieve these targets. These are very aggressive targets the government has set out."

"If they don't have a plan to hire up and staff up in health care, something they've been failing to do for years, no they can't reach these goals," said NDP Leader Ryan Meili.

The Ministry of Health reported that a Request for Information (RFI) will be sent Thursday to engage additional third-party providers for day surgeries, overnight inpatient surgeries and post-operative care.

Merriman said the private care aspects of the plan will be looked at further once progress has been made on reducing the backlog, which currently includes around 35,000 people.

"First, we're going to make sure that we can get done our surgical backlog," Merriman said. "Then at that point and time we would see if we need to keep our capacity at that level ongoing or reduce it. My main priority right now is to try to get everybody that we possibly can to get their surgery done in a timely, safe manner."

Still, patients like Eden Janzen feel they were pushed to the side. She's awaiting a kidney transplant and spoke publicly as the fourth wave caused further slowdowns and delays for many patients in the province.

As of Thursday, Janzen told reporters at the Legislative Building her wait was expected to be another three to five months and will include undergoing all the testing and buildup again.

"Getting the surgeries back fast, that’s great, but they shouldn’t have ever been stopped," Janzen said. "If someone right now said they had a kidney for me, they were ready to get the surgery, I would not get it. There’s no way I would get a kidney without the work-up.”

EXPANDING ICUs

Permanent ICU beds will be expanded from 79 to 90 by June 2022, the province said in a news release. This is the first step in reaching the long-term goal of 110 total beds in ICUs.

Ten high-acuity beds in Regina will become available this Spring.

“The aggressive targets and timelines require necessary health professionals to provide the services,” the proivince said. “Government is working with partners to advance strategies to increase the number of health care workers in Saskatchewan to meet the needs for health services for our residents.”

REPORT ON PANDEMIC SLOWDOWNS RELEASED

According to a report from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) released Thursday, hospitals nationwide have performed 560,000 fewer surgeries since the start of the pandemic compared with previous years.

In Saskatchewan, an average of around 1,700 fewer surgeries were performed per month between March 2020 and June 2021 than in 2019, according to CIHI.

Cheryl Chui with CIHI said staffing will likely be the key for provinces playing catch-up.

"Yes we do have the available operating room space and the equipment but we need the right people there to perform the procedures," Chui said. "There are many strategies that can help to ramp up surgeries and I think there are probably a number of things that are being considered, innovations in where surgeries are performed as well as scheduling and other health workforce considerations. It won't be one magic bullet."

Merriman also noted plans are being worked on to transition long-term COVID-19 patients on ventilators out of critical care settings.