By Cheryl Jahn

Surgical Plan

New plan to address Surgical backlog

May 7, 2020 | 4:54 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – “Slow. That’s a good description of it.”

That’s how Dr. Michael Moran, an orthopaedic surgeon describes his office in the past 100 days.

But that’s about to change.

Health Minister Adrian Dix announced an aggressive plan worth $250 million to address the 30,000 elective surgeries have were cancelled since the pandemic struck the system. That includes plans to hire as many as 400 nurses.

“It’s our hope to hire all the graduating nurses this year and to significantly increase training,” Dix told the public today. There is also a plan to recruit other health care professionals, as well.

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But the first order of business, beginning today, is to contact all those who have had their surgeries postponed.

The timeline set out by the Ministry is as follows:

May 7 – 15 – Contact patients

May 18 – Start non-urgent surgeries

May 31 – Contract private facilities

June – Train, recruit and hire more staff

June 15 – Run all operating rooms at full capacity

June – October – Add capacity

By May 18, 2020, an estimated 30,000 non-urgent scheduled surgeries will have either been postponed or left on a waitlist due to COVID-19. A further 24,000 patients could also be without a referral to a waitlist. This presents a unique and unprecedented challenge never faced by B.C.’s health system. The demands placed by COVID-19 have meant decreased productivity in operating rooms, meaning fewer surgical cases can be completed in the same time.

And, there is a concern for Dr. Moran.

“Do we have the operating rooms available? Do we have the nursing staff? The anaesthesia staff to run them? And those are big questions because we run close to the bone, so to sort of ramp up, increase what we’ve been doing because we run pretty close to 100 percent as it is. It’ll be difficult.”

The Ministry, though, assures it will be looking at all its options moving forward to address the backlog.