Manitoba spent $13M on U.S. surgeries in 2022-23

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This article was published 03/11/2023 (677 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The provincial government paid U.S. hospitals more than $13 million last year to operate on patients who couldn’t get timely care close to home, reigniting questions of whether Manitoba taxpayers scored a deal on the stateside surgery.

North Dakota-based Sanford Health Fargo was paid more than $11.1 million by the Manitoba government in the 2022-23 fiscal year, the province has revealed.

Sanford Health was hired by the diagnostic and surgical recovery task force to perform spinal surgeries and hip and knee replacements for Manitobans.

To date, the province has refused to reveal the value of its untendered contract with Sanford Health, arguing disclosing such information would be harmful to the U.S. hospital’s business interests.

The province has also been silent on exactly how much more procedures in the U.S. are costing taxpayers, compared to what they would have cost locally.

The task force has, however, said taxpayers got a significant discount on the U.S. surgeries, while acknowledging costs would ultimately be higher.

“In order for Manitoban taxpayers to really understand if they’re getting a deal for what’s going on in the States, we need to find out exactly what this money is being spent on,” said Gage Haubrich, Prairie director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

Haubrich said the province should publish a price comparison for procedures in Manitoba versus what the government is paying U.S. hospitals. “Then they can show taxpayers whether or not they’re overpaying because they couldn’t provide the surgery.”

On Friday, the province did not provide statistics on surgeries performed at U.S. hospitals in the 2022-23 fiscal year or the average cost per procedure, when requested by the Free Press.

However, according to Manitoba Health’s annual report, 277 surgical and diagnostic procedures were performed out-of-province between April 1, 2022, and March 31, representing about 0.5 per cent of procedures completed through task force initiatives.

In addition to Sanford Health, the province has contracts with Cleveland Clinic (Ohio), Mayo Clinic, and University of California, San Francisco.

In Canada, it has contracts with Big Thunder Orthopedic Associates (northwest Ontario), Cambie Surgical Centre (Vancouver) and Clearpoint Don Mills Surgical Unit (Toronto).

Cleveland Clinic was paid $498,644 in the past fiscal year. It was hired in August 2022 to offer hip and knee surgeries to Manitobans. In late February — 11 months into the fiscal year — the province reported five patients had received surgery at the clinic.

According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, the average cost for a hip replacement in Manitoba is $9,816, plus physician fees, which can be up to $1,900. The average cost for a knee replacement is $8,919, with up to $1,800 in physician costs.

Meanwhile, the Mayo Clinic was paid $1.43 million by the province in 2022-23.

The province’s agreement with the Mayo Clinic for cardiac electrophysiology was first announced in January. It was unclear Friday how many Manitobans received care at the clinic as part of task force initiatives.

Big Thunder, meantime, was paid $1.32 million in the past fiscal year for orthopedic hip and knee surgeries it provided to Manitobans. In late February, the province also reported 51 patients had received surgery at its locations in Dryden and Kenora.

No payments to U of C San Francisco were recorded. The province added UCSF Health to its list of out-of-province surgical destinations for orthopedic shoulder surgery in early March.

Manitoba Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said their office is continuing to evaluate work done by the task force since it was announced in December 2021 by then-Progressive Conservative government. The newly-elected NDP government directed the task force not to enter into any new arrangements or launch new initiatives shortly after being sworn in.

Premier Wab Kinew cited a lack of oversight for the task force and its spending and decision-making processes as reasons for “hitting the pause button.”

“Manitobans are unanimous in that they want to make sure they’re able to access good quality health care here in their own province,” Asagwara said at an unrelated event Friday. “Strengthening public health care is definitely a priority of our government and we want to work with those across the system who are also invested in making sure that Manitobans can get the care where and when they need it.”

Asagwara would not say if the former government’s spending on out-of-province surgery was good value for Manitobans. “There’s still a lot of work to do in terms of really understanding how we got to his point and making sure we’re developing good plans moving forward.”

According to the province, the task force had spent less than $24 million on 478 out-of-province procedures as of early June, including $440,000 for patients’ travel and accommodation expenses.

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca