Hospital offering more types of surgeries

The Olds Hospital and Care Centre’s surgical program expanded in 2013 to include general orthopedic surgeries and orthopedic trauma procedures.

Plastic surgeries including breast reductions were also added to the list this year as part of an Alberta Health Services plan to expand surgeries at rural hospitals and decrease wait times.

"The program now has expanded so that we are now doing orthopedic surgery. The other increase in services is plastic surgeons are now coming from Red Deer and we’re now doing plastic surgeries," said Colleen Simon, the hospital’s site leader.

The hospital performed roughly 1,500 surgical procedures in 2012, slightly below an AHS target of 1,600, including carpel tunnel surgeries and tendon, ligament and muscle surgeries.

The expanded number of procedures at the Olds hospital was added by AHS in 2012 as part of a provincial government plan that was announced in December 2010 to expand surgeries to rural hospitals and decrease wait-lists.

The expectation, Simon added, is that roughly the same number of procedures performed at the hospital in 2012 will be performed in 2013.

Although she said complex procedures typically slow down the rate at which surgeries can be performed.

"Sometimes you can’t be looking at the exact number of cases to measure the program success because sometimes you have to look at the quality of what you’re doing. For example, when we do knee surgery, ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) with orthopedic, surgeries are much longer. The more complex a surgery is, the less numbers that we do," Simon said.

As part of the expanded surgery program across the province, AHS provided $16.7 million to various hospitals to upgrade the operating rooms, including at the Olds hospital. In addition to the funding, AHS provided all the staff that would be needed to handle the increased workload, such as anesthesiologists and other staff.

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