As of Monday the number of Alberta adults waiting for surgery dropped to 67,186, and 52 per cent are within clinically recommended wait times, says the province.
“As of March 27, we’re currently at an average of 115 per cent of pre-pandemic surgical volumes. That means that approximately 6,000 are being done every week in Alberta,” said Alberta Health in a statement.
Alberta Health says 49.3 per cent of hip replacements were completed within clinically recommended wait times in a January surgery wait-time snapshot, along with 39.3 per cent of knee replacements.
But the NDP called that “cherry picking data” to create a false narrative.
“From April 2019 to January 2023, the median wait times for hip replacements have increased from 18.7 to 26.3 weeks, and knee replacements have increased from 20.6 weeks to 36.9 weeks,” said NDP health critic David Shepherd during a press conference.
He said the main bottleneck in the surgical system is the lack of staff to perform surgeries thanks to the UCP’s attacks on physicians.
“This government can play with numbers, try to jig the system however it likes, but the fundamental truth is this government deeply undermined our public health care system. They drove professionals out of this province.
“I have spoken with folks at the Red Deer Regional Hospital, and other facilities across the province, who have actively been working for years to try and recruit new anesthesiologists and they’ve told me that many have turned down the opportunity and chose to go to jurisdictions like B.C. and others specifically because of the behaviour, the attitude and mismanagement of the UCP government.”
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He said, as a result, Albertans in rural communities don’t know from day to day whether their local emergency department will be open when they need it.
On Tuesday at Ponoka Hospital and Care Centre was once again temporarily closed, this time from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., due to physician illness. On Sunday Sylvan Lake Advanced Ambulatory Care Service was temporarily closed due to a gap in physician coverage.
Shepherd said the UCP government is signing contracts to send patients to privately owned, for-profit facilities while failing to make full use of public surgical facilities.
“The fact is we are not going to see an improvement in wait times no matter how much this government signs sweet contracts for private, for-profit surgical facilities, guarantees them Albertans’ surgeries potentially at the cost of our public facilities. None of that is going to move the dial one inch until we are able to get more anesthesiologists, and more operating room nurses.”
He said an NDP government would modernize primary care with the creation of Family Health Teams to ease pressure on emergency rooms, on EMS and operating rooms.
“We will increase surgery capacity through the public system and we will prioritize workforce recruitment and retention built on a foundation of respect for healthcare workers,” Shepherd said.
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The UCP says it is improving surgery access by improving wait-list management, expanding the surgical workforce and working to retain the existing workforce, expanding alternative care team models to ensure available supports such as anesthesia, adding rapid access clinics, expanding contracting with chartered surgical facilities, optimizing surgical activity at rural sites, and increasing and enhancing Alberta Surgical Initiative-related capital projects.
On Tuesday, Infrastructure Minister Nathan Neudorf announced that Gene Zwozdesky Centre at Norwood was complete.
“I am thrilled that this project is so close to the finish line. It represents a significant investment in Alberta’s future,” said Neudorf in a statement.
Shepherd said this critical project, commissioned and fully funded by Alberta’s NDP government in 2017, will provide badly-needed continuing care beds in the Edmonton region when it opens this fall.
“The progress of this project also demonstrates how the UCP has chosen not to advance other Alberta NDP-era projects, namely the South Edmonton Hospital and the Red Deer Regional Hospital. If these buildings were priorities for Nathan Neudorf and the UCP, we would be celebrating milestones in their construction as well,” Shepherd said in a statement.
szielinski@reddeeradvocate.com
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