It remains unclear how the Ontario government’s three-step plan to reroute surgeries and procedures to private clinics will affect local hospitals. But some predict that it will take some time to see an impact.
On Monday, the provincial government announced the plan to expand private delivery of public health care by “funding clinics to perform more cataract surgeries, MRI and CT scans, colonoscopies, hip and knee replacements and other procedures in an attempt to ease pressures on the hospital system.”
“Our model is really an ambulatory surgical center, so we’re actually already aligned with what is envisioned by the Ministry of Health,” Karen Perkin, vice-president of patient care and chief nurse executive at St. Joseph’s. “We perform more than 20,000 surgeries a year.”
Ambulatory surgery centres (ASCs), that the government says it will be funding, are facilities that provide cost-effective services where surgeries that do not require hospital admissions are performed.
According to Perkin, St. Joseph’s performed 522 fewer cataract surgeries from April to December of last year compared with that same time frame in 2019, prior to the pandemic.
In regards to the province’s three-step plan, Perkin’s said that she is hopeful for the opportunities it can bring forward.
“I think we need to continue to look at new ways to address this, but as we have new technology, new medications, and as we teach our new learners how to to continue to adapt and provide care in an ambulatory care setting, I think there are tons of opportunities for us to improve in this area,” she said. “So I’m hopeful because there’s so many opportunities for us to move forward.”
Additionally, in response to the province’s new plan, the London Health Science Centre (LHSC) said it is “working collaboratively with government partners and hospital peers to find innovative ways to improve access to care and surgical capacity in the province.”
The Nazem Kadri Surgical Centre at LHSC is a standalone ambulatory surgical clinic that is an extension of LHSC’s surgical program. However, it is not designated as a provincial Community Surgical Centre and is not a private facility.
“This LHSC-managed surgical centre works within current surgical volumes and has been able to offset much-needed operating room capacity at both of LHSC’s University and Victoria hospital campuses, ultimately creating efficiencies within the system and enabling more patients to receive surgical care in a timelier manner,” Cathy Vandersluis, president of University Hospital and executive sponsor for the Nazem Kadri Surgical Centre, wrote in a statement.
Since its opening in March 2020, more than 4,400 surgeries have been completed at the surgical centre.
However, in total, the province said there are about 206,000 patients waiting for surgical procedures.
MJ Macera is one of many Ontarians on a wait-list for surgery.
In 2020, she suffered a torn rotator cuff and said that even being a local nurse hasn’t helped speed up the process for getting an MRI, despite being on an emergency list.
“I talked to occupational health here at work and I said, ‘Do nurses or doctors or even any health-care workers get in quicker for an MRI?’ and they’re like, ‘Nope, no special favours for anybody,” she said. “When we’re so short nurses in all of Ontario, (and) probably in the world right now, you would think they’d want people to be back to work fully.”
Working in the cardiac care unit at Victoria Hospital, Macera is on a lift restriction in her dominant arm, saying she finds it hard to perform what would be simple tasks within her day-to-day life such as operating a mouse on a computer.
Looking back and now months into waiting for an appointment, Macera said she would’ve taken drastic measures had she known the process would take so long.
“If I could have paid for an MRI, I hate to say that, but to speed things along, if I could have paid for an MRI I seriously would have,” she said.
Critics of the plan want money invested in the public health-care system instead, with opposition parties and five health-care unions calling on the province to change course. They warn of increased wait times, staff being drained from the “beleaguered public hospital system,” and patients left “vulnerable to paying out of pocket.”
However, the government continues to stress that the surgeries and tests will continue to be paid for by the Ontario Health Insurance Plan.
— with files from Global News’ Andrew Graham.