Thursday September 24, 2020 | VICTORIA, BC
by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
Non-urgent and elective surgeries were cancelled when the COVID-19 pandemic first hit, and now BC is catching up. This is taking a tremendous effort on the part of health care professionals and all the teams that contribute to the smooth operation of hospitals
Today BC Health issued a written update on the government’s surgical renewal commitment. The initial announcement about surgical renewal was given on July 21 by Adrian Dix who was Health Minister at the time.
During the current provincial election Dix — as a candidate — cannot be delivering these updates in person as he was doing weekly prior to the September 21 election call.
Catching up on surgeries that were cancelled in order to clear hospital beds and operating rooms to handle a COVID-19 surge in cases is a huge undertaking. The BC government has put dollars and planning behind it. But the weakest aspect of the process is the continued extra-hours availability of health-care professionals and their support teams, without burning them out.
The extraordinary efforts of dedicated health-care professionals are continuing even as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. Strict protocols include of course superior hygiene, all appropriate PPE, and separate care wards for patients who require COVID-19 isolation.
Current details as issued today September 24:
From March 16 to May 17, non-urgent surgeries (surgeries that have a target wait time of greater than six weeks) were postponed as part of the initial COVID-19 pandemic response. Urgent and emergency surgeries continued to be performed during this period.
On May 7, health authorities began calling all patients waiting for surgery to confirm that they were ready, willing and able to proceed with their surgery in a COVID-19 environment. To date 93,052 patients have been contacted about their surgery.
Health authorities resumed non-urgent surgeries on May 18 and have completed a combined total of 109,693 surgeries as of September 20, 2020, of which 84,126 were urgent and non-urgent scheduled surgeries, and 25,567 were unscheduled or emergency surgeries.
Total surgeries completed by health authority since May 18:
- 30,461 in Fraser Health;
- 20,409 in Interior Health;
- 6,359 in Northern Health;
- 25,620 in Vancouver Coastal Health;
- 22,282 in Vancouver Island Health; and,
- 4,562 in the Provincial Health Services Authority.
Weekly surgeries:
Health authorities reported 5,503 surgeries completed from September 7 to 13. Health authorities have now verified their data and the total number of surgeries completed was 5,830.
During September 14 to 20 the total surgeries completed was 6,691.
Surging through the waitlist:
“We’ve increased the number of surgeries and culled through a waiting list in a very extensive way,” said then-Minister of Health Adrian Dix on Sunday September 20 in a press teleconference out of Prince George. He said that process started happening in May and continued through the summer.
From May 7 to September 13 at total of 90,897 patients were contacted about rebooking their delayed surgeries, said Dix. Of those, 2,003 people said they were “unavailable for COVID reasons” — about two to three percent. “They asked to further defer. That’s over the period. Those are being reduced and getting done.”
As well, 3,988 people said they were unavailable for surgeries for non-COVID reasons.
A number of people who were contacted have not answered or replied yet, said Dix on the day before the writ dropped and BC launched into its 42nd general election.
