Every B.C. resident who had a surgery postponed due to COVID-19 will have had their procedure completed by the end of this month, the provincial Ministry of Health announced Tuesday.
The latest update on the provincial "surgical-renewal strategy" indicates that all 24,488 surgeries postponed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic have either been completed or scheduled for a date before Oct. 1.
The ministry says B.C. performed 134,941 surgeries between April 1 and Aug. 17 of this year, an increase of 7,455 compared to the same timeframe in 2019.
Of those, 103,800 were scheduled surgeries, rather than unscheduled or emergency surgeries. There were 6,288 more scheduled surgeries during the April 1 to Aug. 17 window in 2023 than in 2019.
“Our Surgical Renewal Commitment clearly shows the resilience of our health-care workers and health-care system,” said Health Minister Adrian Dix, in a statement.
“While facing numerous emergencies, we kept going and we achieved our goals. This progress report reflects the strength of our response. We’ve delivered on our commitment to patients to reschedule and complete all surgeries that had been postponed due to the pandemic and we’ve made great progress on transforming our surgical system. I am grateful to the surgical teams and health authorities for working together to deliver better surgeries and get more patients the surgeries they need faster.”
Dix has made "surgical renewal" a key focus since the start of the pandemic, even as the province's health-care system has struggled with staff shortages and burnout-inducing workloads.
While staffing remains dire for many aspects of the system, the ministry says it has hired 219 surgeons, 137 anesthesiologists, 385 perioperative nurses, seven general physician anesthetists and 120 medical-device reprocessing technicians since April 2020 in its effort to perform more surgeries.
Some of B.C.'s success in clearing its COVID-related surgical backlog can be attributed to its use of private facilities to deliver surgeries in the public system. That move – as well as suspicion that government data around wait times for surgeries doesn't tell the whole story – prompted criticism from the BC Orthopaedic Association earlier this year.
In his statement Tuesday, Dix praised the provincial health authorities and health-care providers responsible for surgical care in B.C., and pledged to continue working to improve the system.
"We have learned a lot from the past three years, and we will use these lessons learned to continue to focus on better supporting patients, surgical teams and the health-care system," he said. "We will continue to monitor our progress and, together, we will get more patients surgeries faster and better deliver surgeries to people in B.C.”
