The Saskatoon Health Region hopes to have a contract in place this summer with the Saskatoon Surgicentre for the private clinic to host certain surgical procedures.
The two are negotiating in the wake of the provincial government’s announcement in March it would contract out some surgeries to private centres as part of its strategy to reduce bloated waiting lists.
“What we’re looking at this year is focusing on patients specifically who have waited a long time for day surgery,” said Deb Gudmundson, executive director of acute care for the health region.
Procedures with waiting lists of 18 months or longer will be targeted — including orthopedic surgeries such as arthroscopies (inspections of joints) and plastic surgeries such as breast reductions.
The Surgicentre already hosts those types of procedures in its two operating rooms on Spadina Crescent East and has the capacity for more surgeries to be performed on a daily basis, said administrator Richard Bourassa.
“The facility itself can handle pretty much all day surgery procedures,” he said, adding the Surgicentre has been operating since the early 1980s. Its initial services included uninsured cosmetic surgery and plastic surgery, but the variety of procedures done there has expanded to include orthopedic surgeries for groups that are exempt from the Canada Health Act, such as the Workers Compensation Board.
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Under the Health Act, said Bourassa, private centres are limited to performing only day surgeries, where the patient is admitted and discharged on the same day — which means the procedures must have a relatively short anesthesia period, short recovery time and low risk of complications.
The Surgicentre performs about 1,000 procedures a year, which is 60 per cent of its capacity after a second operating theatre was built five years ago. The government’s announcement came at a good time, said Bourassa, since the Surgicentre will be renovating in the near future and will be able to tailor the work to the needs of patients coming from the health region.
If negotiations are successful, the Surgicentre would become the fourth site in the city for surgeries — in addition to St. Paul’s Hospital, City Hospital and Royal University Hospital. When patients are put on a wait list for a surgery, they would be informed it could take place at any one of the four sites, said Gudmundson. The same surgeons who would perform the surgeries at the hospital sites would perform the surgeries that are scheduled for the Surgicentre.
However, additional staff, such as nurses, will be provided by the Surgicentre — so the contract being drawn up will include a provision that the Surgicentre report its human resources plan.
“For example, what we don’t want to see happen is our staff leave us and go work for the Surgicentre. That’s some of the detail we’re going to have to work on,” said Gudmundson.
The contract being negotiated between the health region and the Surgicentre would be for one year. After that, a request for proposals process will be used. The government has said the use of private centres for publicly funded surgeries is intended only to be short- or medium-term, until the system catches up on the backlog. Similar negotiations are ongoing in Regina with the Omni Surgery Centre.
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