More than 3,000 elective surgeries cancelled in the Interior Health region due to the COVID-19 pandemic will be rescheduled as part of a major B.C.-wide surgical renewal plan, the province announced on Thursday.
According to the Ministry of Health, 3,081 non-urgent surgeries were cancelled between March 16 and May 3 in the Interior Health region, which covers a wide swath of B.C.’s Southern Interior.
“On March 16, we made the difficult decision to postpone surgeries to prepare our health-care system for a potential surge of COVID-19 patients,” said Adrian Dix, Minister of Health.
“Our commitment is now to get patients through their surgery safely. It is a massive undertaking, but we are giving the same 100 per cent effort to the task that we’ve made to flattening the curve in B.C.”
By mid-May, an estimated 30,000 non-urgent scheduled surgeries province-wide will have either been postponed or left on a waitlist due to COVID-19.
A further 24,000 patients could also be without a referral to a waitlist, an “unprecedented challenge,” facing B.C., the province said in a media release.
“The impact is greater than anything faced by B.C.’s health system,” the province said.
The plan put forward indicates B.C.’s health care system should be able to keep up with the demand for new surgeries while clearing the COVID-19 related backlog within 17 to 24 months.
The ministry was unable to provide the current number of patients on the waitlist for an elective surgery in the Interior Health region.
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