Saskatchewan to send patients to Alberta for privatized surgery; won't pay for travel
Saskatchewan plans to send people to Alberta to get privatized surgeries, but the cost of travel won't be covered by the government.
Health Minister Paul Merriman said the Saskatchewan Party government will begin paying a Calgary clinic this fall to perform 20 knee and hip surgeries a month for those on the province's surgical wait list.
"If somebody does have the option to go to Calgary, they will incur the travel expenses back and forth, but they would have their surgery done considerably faster," Merriman said.
"If somebody has the financial means, they can do that and that opens up another spot within the public system."
Colleen Flood, University of Ottawa research chair in health law and policy, said the move would affect patients in lower socioeconomic circumstances who may find it more difficult to pay the cost of travel and, therefore, lose out on access to timely care
"That really is an additional user charge that's being added onto the patient, and that's in contravention of the Canada Health Act," Flood said.
"If the Saskatchewan government is planning on sending patients abroad, or to other jurisdictions, they need to make sure there's some assistance and compensation for the travel costs that they may incur."
NDP Opposition Leader Carla Beck criticized the delivery of out-of-province care, saying it would allow people to jump the line, which goes against the principles of the Canadian health-care system.
The Ministry of Health said there were more than 35,000 people waiting for a surgery as of March 31 with more than 8,000 patients waiting for hip or knee replacement surgeries alone.
Sending some patients to Calgary is part of Saskatchewan's aggressive plan to have the shortest surgical wait list in the country, Merriman said.
The province is also looking to open two private clinics within its public health system, with hopes that a Regina clinic will perform more than 3,000 orthopedic surgeries annually. The surgeries will be privately delivered, but publicly funded.
Merriman pitched the plan as providing choices to patients. When someone is being booked for a knee or hip surgery, they will have the choice to either access care in a private clinic, through the public system or travel to Calgary.
"It's not a political decision," Merriman said. "It's a clinical decision on where the specialist sees them in the queue."
Last week, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said his Progressive Conservative government would "get creative" when looking at ways to deliver surgeries as it deals with a staffing crisis in hospitals that worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Like Saskatchewan, provinces throughout Canada have health-care systems that are partially privatized, including long-term care homes, family doctors, MRI tests and diagnostics.
In Saskatchewan, privately delivered surgeries accounted for 15 per cent of all surgeries performed in 2019-20, the Ministry of Health said.
Flood cautioned that opening the door to private clinics could place more pressure on politicians to privatize other services.
"The risk with these kinds of things is that once they're in place inside a public health-care system, they don't just sit there passively working away and they're all happy clams," Flood said. "They're going to want to make more money."
She said transparency is important and provincial governments need to remain clear "this is all within the public Medicare system" and will be "keeping their eyes very firmly fixed on the performance of these clinics and making sure they deliver."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 17, 2022.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
A newspaper says video of Prince William and Kate should halt royal rumour mill. That's a tall order
Prince William and his wife Catherine have been filmed at a farm shop near their Windsor home, The Sun newspaper reported -- the first footage of Kate since she had abdominal surgery for an unspecified condition two months ago.
'You ask for your money, they disappear': Ontario man loses $17K to AI crypto scam
A Toronto man is spreading the word of a cryptocurrency scam that lures victims using AI-generated news sites after he lost $17,000 in investments.
Hertz CEO out following electric car 'horror show'
The company, which announced in January it was selling 20,000 of the electric vehicles in its fleet, or about a third of the EVs it owned, is now replacing the CEO who helped build up that fleet, giving it the company’s fifth boss in just four years.
High thoughts: The habits of Canadian cannabis users are revealed in a new StatCan report
Statistics Canada has conducted a series of surveys to measure the impacts of legalized cannabis since the Cannabis Act took effect in 2018. The latest one, the 2023 National Cannabis Survey, sheds light on users' preferences and habits last year.
Demand soars for solar eclipse glasses in Canada. Are they worth buying?
The demand for total solar eclipse glasses used to safely view the rare celestial event has been ramping up as sellers, along with astronomy and eye-care experts in Canada, warn that viewing the eclipse with the naked eye is dangerous.
Trump says Jews who vote for Democrats 'hate Israel' and their religion
Former U.S. president Donald Trump on Monday charged that Jews who vote for Democrats 'hate Israel' and hate 'their religion,' igniting a firestorm of criticism from the White House and Jewish leaders.
Toronto family doctor who called patient's body 'perfect' suspended for 3 months: tribunal
A family doctor in Toronto has been suspended for three months after a disciplinary tribunal found that he failed to follow proper protocols while examining a patient's breasts and made inappropriate comments about her body.
Freddie Mercury's home is on the market for first time since 1980 minus his 'exquisite clutter'
Freddie Mercury's sanctuary in London, where he lived the last decade of his life, is on sale for the first time in nearly half a century -- minus his "exquisite clutter."
'The lost season': Winter comes to a close as Canada's warmest on record
The warmest winter on record could have far-reaching effects on everything from wildfire season to erosion, climatologists say, while offering a preview of what the season could resemble in the not-so-distant future unless steps are taken to cut greenhouse gas emissions.