Manitoba surgery, diagnostic task force announces strides forward in pandemic backlog
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/04/2023 (871 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Within 16 months, Manitoba’s pandemic surgical and diagnostic test backlog has been cut by 30 per cent and 26,464 impacted patients have been treated.
On Wednesday — in a public process update — leaders of the diagnostic and surgical recovery task force said it has eliminated backlogs in 10 areas of the medical system, and significantly reduced them in about 15 of 30 key areas.
It is focusing now on bringing down wait times to within nationally-accepted standards, via additional operating room capacity, recruiting more surgeons and specialists, and embracing technology advancements.
“As we deal with our backlog, we are simultaneously dealing with our wait lists, and building redundancy in our system through our people and our places and our equipment, but we have to do that together,” said Dr. Ed Buchel, surgical lead of the task force.
RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Dr. Ed Buchel, surgical lead of the task force. 
Buchel — along with Dr. Peter MacDonald, head of the task force’s steering committee, and executive director David Matear — said backlogs have been eliminated for cataract and oral surgeries, ultrasound and CT scans, pediatric neurology assessments, urology procedures, implantation of pacemakers, echocardiography and cardiac catheterization lab tests, and for orthopedic surgeries other than hip and knee replacements.
However, there are still long wait lists in some of these areas.
The task force considers a backlog eliminated when the queue gets back down to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels.
Tackling the long wait for hip and knee replacements is still a main focus, with the pandemic backlog in that field expected to be eliminated sometime next year, MacDonald said.
“As we deal with our backlog, we are simultaneously dealing with our wait lists, and building redundancy in our system through our people and our places and our equipment, but we have to do that together.”–Dr. Ed Buchel
Supply chain issues and asbestos remediation at Concordia Hospital have delayed some efforts to ramp-up capacity for those surgeries, but the task force highlighted “dramatic increases” in the number being done at other local hospitals. It has introduced plans to increase operating room capacity in Winnipeg and in rural Manitoba to eventually each take on 20-50 additional cases per month.
More than 100 joint surgeries have been completed in Northern Ontario, and the task force is trying to get better data to track Manitoba patients who head out of province to bypass long provincial wait lists.
Sending patients out of province was meant to be a temporary measure, but it will remain an option, officials said.
RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Dr. Peter MacDonald, head of the task force’s steering committee. 
“Only a small number of projects are actually dedicated to out-of-province surgery, but most of the work is in-province system-building,” MacDonald said, adding the task force has nearly 90 other projects on the go.
“We’re a busy organization. Most of it doesn’t make the headlines, but there’s a lot going on behind the scenes.”
The task force was formed in December 2021, and its work has been ongoing for a little over a year.
Meantime, there are still “significant concerns” about the length of the backlog, said NDP health critic Uzoma Asagwara.
“I know that folks on the task force are working hard, but they don’t have a partner in the government who’s willing to invest in the ways that are needed in order to make sure folks get the surgeries they need and they don’t have a government who’s willing to listen to experts and treat them as the experts they are.”
On Wednesday, following news reports of sleep disorder physicians resigning from their roles on the task force, the opposition again levelled criticism at officials for not adequately listening to front-line health-care experts.
RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Executive director Dr. David Matear 
Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont described Wednesday’s task force news conference as “deeply deceptive,” because it only focused on positive progress and ignored areas that still have long backlogs.
“They’ve just done the easy stuff first, and they haven’t even begun to deal with the tough stuff, because all the tough stuff is done in the public system. The fact is that for-profit companies are not interested in the hard cases because they can’t make money off them,” Lamont said.
Lamont also questioned why the Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals — a union representing allied health professionals that recently voted in favour of a strike mandate — was excluded from the task force.
“They’ve just done the easy stuff first, and they haven’t even begun to deal with the tough stuff, because all the tough stuff is done in the public system.”–Liberal leader Dougald Lamont
The task force expects to add 120,000 cases to the health-care system over the next two years and is planning to build capacity to do it, according to a provincial budget update published online earlier this year.
At that time, 176 Manitoba patients had been sent out of province for surgery as part of provincial agreements with clinics in the U.S. and Ontario.
— with files from Carol Sanders and Danielle Da Silva
katie.may@winnipegfreepress.com
Katie May is a multimedia producer for the Free Press.
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