Merriman says Sask. looked at using more jurisdictions to cut surgical backlog

The Saskatchewan government says Alberta wasn’t the only jurisdiction it considered for doing private surgeries as it tries to get a handle on a surgical backlog that has some patients waiting 12 months or more.

Health Minister Paul Merriman told Gormley on Friday the province also investigated using private clinics in Ontario. There was even an examination of using clinics in the U.S., but Merriman said that isn’t an option the government is pursuing at this time.

“We wanted to make sure we had an all-about approach to see if there were options out there and what it would entail,” said Merriman.

“Obviously, when you go across an international border, there are some challenges in different surgical procedures (and) different certifications. So right now, we are doing the east-west.”

The government has contracted a Calgary facility to do up to 20 knee and hip surgeries per month for people who are on Saskatchewan’s surgical waiting list. Merriman said the government has an option to increase that total to 40 or 50 per month if the need arises.

However, patients sent to Alberta will have to pay their own way there and back as the province is not covering travel expenses for the procedures.

The provincial government also has issued a Request for Proposals to get 3,000 orthopedic surgeries a year done at a private surgical facility in Regina.

Merriman noted that 130,000 publicly funded surgeries have been done in private clinics in Saskatchewan over the past 10 years. Some have been orthopedic surgeries, but the government wants to expand that number no matter where the operations are done.

“We wanted to make sure that we had the option of (patients) staying overnight if need be, which creates a whole other layer,” Merriman said.

“If an individual needs to stay in the evening, we have to make sure that we have the proper staffing there (and) that the clinic is set up and licensed for that because right now they were just licensed for the day surgeries.”

According to the government, there are about 8,000 patients waiting for joint replacements in Saskatchewan, with the majority of those in Saskatoon and Regina. Merriman said there are about 35,000 people in total on the surgical wait list.

The minister said the highest number of surgeries performed in a single year in Saskatchewan was 90,000 in 2019. The province wants to surpass that number by 7,000 this year, by 13,000 next year, and by 18,000 in the final year of its three-year plan.

That would get the province down to a six-month-long waiting list for surgeries.

“We’re building the system to make sure that we can get those surgeries done,” Merriman said. “People have been extremely patient in waiting for their surgeries and we want to make sure that we put everything on the table to be able to get those surgeries done and get people back to their normal life.”

That explains the government’s decision to send patients out of province to get their surgeries done, be it to Alberta or another jurisdiction.

“We want to make sure that this (plan) is working, that this is something that the Saskatchewan people are prepared to do is go to Calgary or other options, and then we’ll look at expanding that out from there,” Merriman said.

“We want to walk before we run on this.”