The Province has enlisted the aid of community clinics to increase surgery capacity.
Minister of Health Jason Copping announced Friday that chartered surgical facilities in Edmonton and Calgary will begin providing cataract and other eye procedures under new contracts with Alberta Health Services.
The aim is to complete 35,000 surgeries in the upcoming year, which Copping said is 25 per cent more than last year.
The Province said performing these procedure in community clinics will increase surgical capacity for other procedures, including complex cataract and retinal surgeries, as well as ear, nose and throat surgeries, while decreasing the wait time for patients needing eye procedures.
The government has allotted $133 million for this move in the 2022 budget, Copping added.
As of April 1, contracts with Holy Cross Surgical Services and Vision Group Canada will provide approximately 20,000 eye procedures in Calgary and 10,000 in Edmonton.
The Province has also acquired a surgical recovery lead in Canadian healthcare executive Ronan Segrave, who will work to reduce the surgical backlog exacerbated by the pandemic alongside Alberta Health and AHS.
Segrave said his work will aid in reducing the wait list and improving surgery experience while saving money. He also indicated the establishment of a central electronic database for individuals on the surgery wait-list is in the works.
Chartered surgical facilities currently perform about 17 per cent of all procedures in the province. Last fiscal year, 45,000 operations were performed in these facilities.
The recommended wait time for a procedure according to physician standards is 16 weeks, the Province said. But some patients are still waiting twice as long for surgery, Copping said.
Over 73,000 Albertans are waiting for surgery as of mid-April, he said.
Dr. Francois Belanger, vice president, quality, and chief medical officer at Alberta Health Services said that the accumulated backlog from COVID-19 is approximately 55,000 procedures, about 32,000 which are from waves four and five of the pandemic.
