The COVID-19 pandemic forced the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) to postpone thousands of surgeries and the head of the organization doesn’t know when the province will be able to resume those procedures.
During a Provincial Emergency Operations Centre (PEOC) technical briefing on Tuesday, Scott Livingstone said he wouldn’t even speculate when that could be.
“It’s not just about what’s on the waiting list today,” he said.
“It’s what’s coming to the waiting list. Is there a large number of people that haven’t been able to see their family physicians to be referred?”
Livingstone said the SHA postponed approximately 26,000 surgeries between March 15, 2020 and Oct. 9, 2021. He also said the health authority has undertaken around 2,000 fewer procedures between Sept. 19 and Oct. 9 of this year compared with the same period before the pandemic.
And he said the health authority doesn’t yet have a plan to resume the service levels, though he told reporters the SHA executive is working on one.
“One of the things that we’re going to be putting forth is a strategy that looks at how do we expand our surgical capacity?… Is it extended hours or is it working on weekends? Is it not going through summer slowdown?” he said.
He offered one estimate – that, based on historical volumes, it would take a year and a half to clear the backlog for orthopedic surgery.
Jessica Bailey, who suffers from kidney failure, said she won’t last that long.
“As a palliative patient, a year and a half is not feasible for me,” she said.
Bailey has been waiting for a transplant for years. She previously told Global News the SHA scheduled one but then postponed it about a week later, when health authority leadership announced it was delaying all surgeries.
Bailey said she tried to keep in touch but that she hasn’t heard from the province in weeks about whether she would get her surgery.
She told Global News she wonders why some people with COVID-19, who are largely unvaccinated, are able to receive care in another province when she can’t.
“I want to know if they’re going to treat me the same as they have these unvaccinated patients paying for them to go (out of) province to get medical care,” she said.
She said she doesn’t know what Livingstone’s announcement means for her.
“I’m at the end stage, so I’m really, really starting to feel it, fatigue-wise and just (my) quality of life is not very good. I need to just rest,” she told Global News.
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