Private clinic to take bookings for surgeries

Some surgical patients in Regina will soon find themselves going under the knife outside of a hospital.

Beginning this week, the Omni Surgery Centre is taking bookings for patients who are to undergo dental and arthroscopic knee surgery through the provincial government’s initiative to cut surgical wait times and eliminate the backlog of pending surgeries.

The program, announced in March, will see some publicly funded surgeries performed in private clinics in Regina and Saskatoon. The bookings at Omni will be made like any other through the Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region.

While some question the government’s motives behind the program, Health Minister Don McMorris said the changes are not meant to open the door to privatization.

"This is allowing patients to receive service in a timely manner — that’s what is driving this," said McMorris. "The Patient First Review talked about (how) the biggest irritant of people in the general public was the waits they’ve had.

"We’re looking at all options: Expanding the public system as well as looking at third-party delivery. This may be new to Saskatchewan, a third-party deliverer as a surgical clinic, but third-party delivery within the health-care system in Saskatchewan is not new."

During an interview last week, McMorris said he’s confident a private clinic in Saskatoon will also start booking patients soon.

The Saskatoon Surgicentre on Spadina Crescent East is in the process of negotiating a contract for performing publicly funded surgeries.

"The Saskatoon Health Region is working closely with the Surgicentre to come up with an agreement on certain procedures," McMorris said.

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 government hopes to have no patient in the province wait more than three months for any surgery by 2014.

According to government statistics, of the 40,000 surgeries performed in Saskatchewan during the first six months of the year, 27 per cent of patients had waited more than four months.

Just under 27,000 patients were waiting for surgery as of June 30.

In the Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region, about 11,000 surgeries were performed between January and June, with 29 per cent of patients having waited for more than three months.

Around 8,500 people were on waiting lists to start July.

The contract between the Regina health region and Omni (which only includes dental and arthroscopic knee surgeries) runs until the end of March, at which time the provincial government will open up third-party surgeries to a request for proposals (RFP) process to allow other clinics to bid on the right to perform the surgeries.

"We’ll be studying that to see how it moves forward to the end of March and then looking at whether we continue to expand, perhaps, the services or just look at the services we have contracted now as we see the numbers drop and the waits drop," said McMorris.

So far, it appears the surgical initiative will result in lower per-procedure costs for the Regina health region.

Knee surgeries at Omni run about $1,500 each, representing a savings of $179, or 11 per cent, from the in-hospital cost. Dental surgeries cost $965, $76 less than at a hospital.

McMorris and Trent Truscott, the health region’s executive director of surgical care services, chalked the savings up to lower overhead costs at the private clinic.

"Our main focus was to make sure their costs were at or below our costs and that they were able to deliver a service that was safe and effective for our patients," said Truscott.

"The details for what Omni pays for their staff salaries or their Band-Aids, for that matter, I’m not privy to. I do know what they’re going to charge us and it seems a competitive cost."

The surgical centre is expected to perform between 300 and 500 procedures for the health region by the end of the fiscal year.

And while the facility’s owners hope to expand the business, Dr. Alan Beggs, medical director for Omni, said that does not include poaching staff from health region facilities.

"We haven’t taken anyone away who isn’t a casual worker and just wants extra shifts or someone who is actually retired and wants a few more years of extra employment," said Beggs.