The Ontario government has announced new funding to address the surgical backlog that was created due to a shift in resources amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
In new documents released on Wednesday, officials said its surgical recovery plan will include initiatives that will allow hospitals and health systems to expand total capacity to 110 to 115 per cent in order to clear some of the backlog.
The provincial government allocated $216 million in new funding that will focus on surgical volumes and activity. This will pay for 67,000 additional surgeries and procedures, such as dealing with hip replacements, cataracts and colonoscopies. There will be a focus on areas with the hardest hit hospitals such as in Peel Region and Scarborough.
The roadmap also included new money for thousands of more diagnostic imaging hours to address wait times for scans. Officials said $35 million will be spent to conduct approximately 135,000 more diagnostic imaging hours to eligible hospitals split between 61,406 CT hours and 75,571 MRI hours, which represents a 16-per-cent increase to this year’s budgeted hours.
In previously announced funding by the government, another $18 million will go to a centralized waitlist management system, $1 million for surgical smoothing coaching, $30 million for a surgical innovation fund, and up to 24 million for community alternatives to hospitals. A total of $324 million has been allocated for surgical recovery.
Ontario hospitals were previously asked to pause or defer non-urgent and elective surgeries and producers in order to maximize resources to those who were hospitalized with the virus as the province grappled with case surges.
The province’s former chief medical officer of health, Dr. David Williams, issued a stoppage on those types of surgeries twice during the pandemic (during the first and third waves of the virus).
According to the documents, before COVID-19 it took three to four months to add a new hip or knee or cataract patient to the surgical waitlist from a primary care referral “so new patients will take time to enter the surgical system.”
Officials said its expected that there will be an increase in future surgical demand for new patients.
The documents noted high-volume, non-urgent scheduled surgeries make up a large portion of patients waiting for surgical care.
Government representatives indicated that regardless of the shift in medical resources due to the pandemic, 99.3 per cent of the “most urgent and semi-urgent patients received their surgeries” and 73 per cent of all patients have now received their surgery.
The province said more than 465,000 scheduled surgeries occurred in hospitals between April 2020 and March 2021.
At a press conference Wednesday afternoon addressing the surgical backlog, Health Minister Christine Elliott would not give a timeline on exactly how long it will take to clear the surgical backlog citing that there will be an influx of new patients who may not have sought care before due to COVID-19.
“Our goal is for hospitals to return to 100% of pre-pandemic operations in Fall 2021, increasing up to 115% of operations, as required and as capacity allows,” the documents read.
“System will begin to realize impact of increased output of surgeries between October 2021 to Spring 2022.”
However, a report by Ontario’s fiscal watchdog in May said it will take the province approximately three-and-a-half years to clear the surgical backlog from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Financial Accountability Office (FAO) projected, at the time, that the backlog of cancelled surgeries will reach 419,200 procedures by the end of September.
The FAO estimated it would cost the province $1.3 billion to clear the backlog, and notes the government has allocated $610 million in its latest budget to address the issue.
The watchdog said its projections on clearing the backlog assumes hospitals will be able to operate at 11 per cent above pre-pandemic volumes in the coming years.
— With files from The Canadian Press