Health Minister Tyler Shandro (Government of Alberta)

By Justin Goulet

Health Minister says surgical backlog to be cleared by 2023

Sep 11, 2020 | 10:07 AM

EDMONTON, AB – The provincial government has promised to clear the surgical backlog caused by COVID-19 by the year 2023.

Beginning back on March 18, all scheduled surgeries were put on hold until May 4. This resulted in a 60 percent reduction in surgeries, creating a backlog of about 25,000 procedures.

Health Minister Tyler Shandro laid out more details of the 2023 Alberta Surgical Initiative (ASI) Friday morning. The ASI includes plans to increase surgical activity volume to 150 percent if needed to meet the 2023 target.

“It’s going to take a lot of hard work from our health care professionals and I realize that they’re already under incredible stress form the pandemic and that’s not going to be going away anytime soon, but I know that they’ll do whatever it takes to do this, because it’s not MY goal, it’s THEIRS,” Shandro said on Friday.

“It’s why every surgeon goes to work every day, and why every family doctor, every nurse, every physiotherapist, everyone in the health system works towards the best interest of their patients.”

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To date, 88 percent of the provincial surgical backlog has been eliminated.

“By the end of this year, AHS will be providing as many surgeries as they did each month prior to the pandemic. Beginning in the new year, hospitals and publicly-funded chartered surgical facilities will keep on increasing the volumes in the province to more than 100 percent of pre-COVID levels to continue to reduce the wait times here in Alberta,” the Health Minister stated.

“The system will ramp up to at least 125 percent of pre-pandemic volumes over the first quarter of 2021. We’ll reassess as we go, and we’ll be prepared to increase volumes to 150 percent if needed. We’ll measure our progress against recommended wait times and keep volumes at the levels needed to reach our goal of 2023.”

Shandro said the initiative will include more lower-risk surgeries in rural hospitals across the province as well as at existing and new chartered surgical facilities under contract with Alberta Health Services.

“This work with the chartered surgical facilities is key since they will have the capacity to do more surgeries at [a] lower cost.”

A request for proposals (RFP) from the province is expected to boost the number of surgical facilities, according to Shandro. A formal RFP will be posted by AHS in the fall of 2020.

A new Indigenous stream grant program was also announced by Shandro.

Six First Nations communities will be eligible for grants of up to $50,000. Funding would go towards developing proposals under the RFP.

The eligible First Nations include the Blood Tribe, southwest of Lethbridge, as well as:

• Enoch Cree Nation, west of Edmonton
• Maskwacis, home to four Cree First Nation bands southeast of Edmonton
• Tsuut’ina Nation, southwest of Calgary
• Bigstone Cree Nation, southwest of Fort McMurray, with a health facility in Edmonton
• Siksika Nation, southeast of Calgary