Cut Manitoba-North Dakota surgery agreement: health coalition

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This article was published 21/04/2023 (915 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba Health Coalition is calling on the provincial government to stop sending patients across the U.S. border for surgery, in the wake of anti-transgender legislation passed this week in North Dakota.

The contract for spinal surgeries at Sanford Health’s clinic in Fargo, N.D., should be rescinded and the province should review all of its contracts for surgeries and diagnostic testing in the United States to make sure Manitobans aren’t being sent to sites with “discriminatory health-care laws,” said coalition provincial director Thomas Linner.

“From a moral standpoint, should we be giving states that are currently in the process of restricting the medical rights of their citizens based on discriminatory politics rather than medical care the kind of cover that having a contract with a Canadian province would give them?”

In 2022, the province’s diagnostic and surgical recovery task force signed an agreement with Sanford Health to perform spinal surgeries in Fargo for eligible Manitobans.

On Thursday, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum signed legislation restricting gender-affirming care for transgender patients younger than 18, making it a crime for doctors to perform sex-reassignment surgeries on minors or prescribe hormone-blocking medication to a transgender child.

North Dakota previously passed legislation banning transgender females from joining female sports teams. This follows many states clawing back abortion rights when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision last year.

Blandine Tona, director of programs for the Women’s Health Clinic in Winnipeg, said the clinic is supporting the coalition’s call.

Acknowledging Manitobans need to go out of province for health care they can’t access close to home, Tona said taxpayer money shouldn’t be spent in jurisdictions that aren’t offering, for political reasons, the non-discriminatory, dignified medical care Manitobans are entitled to receive.

“Human rights matter, and if we give Manitobans’ money into a place, they should be receiving equal care and dignified care. So I don’t think that money should go out. It should be supporting services here, and services like ours.”

Demand for abortion services has doubled at the Women’s Health Clinic since the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic, but the clinic is severely short-staffed, Tona said.

The organization has been submitting related funding proposals to the provincial government since 2020, but hasn’t secured any additional funding, Tona said. It is not funded to provide gender-affirming care.

That’s part of the reason what’s happening in North Dakota is “very, very concerning,” Tona said, noting patients end up looking elsewhere if they can’t get the care they need at home.

Linner said the province needs to “deeply consider” the impact on transgender Manitobans and their families, as well as gender-non-conforming Manitobans and women and girls affected by U.S. restrictions to reproductive health care when sending patients across the border.

“This is happening next door. It is not something that we can ignore. We have to stare this in the eyes and come to some moral conclusions here,” he said.

The Manitoba Health Coalition is a non-profit health-care advocacy group with ties to the provincial NDP.

The health minister’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment Friday.

As of February, the province said Sanford Health had performed 105 spinal surgeries and 36 hip and knee surgeries for Manitoba patients.

katie.may@winnipegfreepress.com