More operating rooms are coming to Calgary’s Foothill Medical Centre.
On Friday afternoon, Premier Jason Kenney announced $63.5 million would be spent over three years to build out 11 more ORs, a one-third expansion of the hospital’s existing 32 operating rooms.
The funds come from the three-year $133.1 million portion of funding earmarked for the Alberta Surgical Initiative Capital Program, which aims to increase capacity for the initiative that hopes to reduce surgery wait times.
Health Minister Jason Copping said some of the new surgery spaces in the hospital in his Calgary-Varsity riding will have specialized functions like minimally-invasive surgery and enhanced air exchange. Foothills will also be getting 17 new recovery spaces.
Copping said the expanded capacity will help add around 7,000 surgeries per year.
The health minister said the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic added about 10,000 people to the wait list, but that list hasn’t grown much in the past two months.
Dr. Francois Belanger, Alberta Health Services chief medical officer and vice-president of quality, said the province’s surgery wait list is currently “stable,” numbering 76,800 this week and said that number is “moving in the right direction.”
Copping added surgeries at AHS facilities have recently been at 95 per cent of pre-pandemic levels.
The Opposition questions how those new operating rooms will be staffed.
“Operating rooms don’t provide healthcare to Albertans. Doctors, nurses, surgical teams, and healthcare workers do, working tirelessly to ensure Albertans are cared for,” NDP MLA David Shepherd said.
“There is no new operating funding above inflation and population growth in Budget 2022 for Alberta Health Services.”
The premier said the staff for the new operating rooms would come from the $600 million in additional health budget funding. He also pointed to the $900 million in the 2021 budget for the Alberta Surgical Initiative (ASI).
Is there a doctor in the house
The president of the Alberta Medical Association said the new rooms was a step towards reducing the pandemic-exacerbated surgery wait list.
“But that’s just a physical structure. I think our biggest challenge that we are going to be facing and that we’re facing right now is actually the human health resource component,” Dr. Vesta Michelle Warren said.
Warren said there’s also a shortage of anesthesiologists, surgeons and post-surgery care including primary care physicians.
“We know that primary care really suffered through the pandemic. We’ve seen a lot of physicians leave practice, retire, leave the province, leave medicine in general. And I hear anecdotally of many more health care workers – not just physicians – who once they get through the pandemic, they’re done.”
The AMA president said Alberta isn’t the only province hoping to attract physicians and surgeons, noting intraprovincial and international competition. She said compensation isn’t the main decision-driver for docs considering relocation.
“It’s how you’re treated. It’s that relationship. It’s knowing that you’re going to have some stability when you move into that province. And so I think our number one barrier right now in terms of recruiting and retaining physicians that currently work here is we need to have an agreement with our physicians and our government that is balanced, that is transparent, that is fair,” Warren said.
The first year of the pandemic was marked by contentious contract renegotiations by the province for Alberta doctors.
In recent weeks, the AMA returned to the table with “interspace negotiations” and the government approved the use of virtual doctor visits and care, a pandemic development.
“It’s never going to go away. But the role of virtual care going forward in Alberta and in our health care system is one that’s yet to be determined and everybody recognizes this,” Warren said. “Seeing the parties beginning to work better, building on that relationship will help us as we move through negotiations as well, because we do have common interests.”
But the Warren isn’t sure if lower surgery wait times because of ASI will be a lasting effect.
“What I’ve always found is that demand will fill that gap. If there is availability for surgeries, people will fill it,” she said, stressing the need to monitor quality of outcomes.
“Will the waitlist build up again? Probably, just because that’s what’s happened in other places.”