Nova Scotia has completed 50,000 surgeries this year and officials say they’re close to pre-pandemic levels, but there are still 22,600 people on waitlists for various surgeries across the province.
During a legislature committee Tuesday, Nova Scotia Health Authority CEO Karen Oldfield promised that they would achieve national benchmark wait lists by mid-2025.
“When we look at the national benchmarks, we should be around 12,000 on our waitlists, we’re just over 22,000,” she told reporters following the committee.
“That’s 10,000 people we need to serve — 10,000 Nova Scotians above the national benchmark.”
Oldfield said they need to find a way to keep doing the annual 50,000 annual surgeries while also breaking down the waitlist.
“So if you took that over four years, that would give you (an extra) 2,500, 2,500, 2,500,” she said.
But the current wait list numbers don’t take into account all the Nova Scotians waiting for their initial consult with a specialist.
“We honestly don’t have good data in terms of individual surgeons waitlists,” Oldfield admitted.
According to a recent report by the Fraser Institute, when it comes surgery, often the longest part of the wait is for the initial consult with a specialist. On average, it takes Nova Scotians about 37.3 weeks to see a specialist after getting a referral from a family doctor.
Oldfield says they’re now working on a way to streamline the process with a centralized online system set to go live this spring, which would allow family doctors to see wait lists for surgeons across the province.
“So we will have line of sight,” said Oldfield.
“We can sort through who needs care in a higher priority, can they go to Kentville? Can they go to Truro? Wherever it may be. With all that information we can make much better decisions and provide more more timely access,” she said.
But opposition parties question if the province can really reduce the current waitlists by nearly half by 2025.
“We just heard Karen Oldfield say that’s serving 10,000 people, but that’s assuming the list of people waiting for surgery remains static,” said Chender.
The province has seen some success. Nova Scotia health officials say the wait list has gone already dropped by about 3,400 patients since May.
However, while the goal is to meet national benchmarks by 2025, during the 2021 election campaign, the PC Party initially promised to meet those targets within 18 months of being elected, which would be May 2023.
“The truth is that the finish line keeps moving and moving. This was a 100-metre sprint, now it’s a marathon,” said Liberal Health Critic, Brendan Maguire.
— With a file from The Canadian Press
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