Province quietly adds foot, ankle, shoulder surgeries to out-of-town medical menu options

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This article was published 19/05/2023 (884 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba is offering to send people who need foot, ankle or shoulder surgery to Toronto and Vancouver in a bid to shrink pandemic-backlogged wait lists.

The province quietly updated its website to reflect the changes, but its diagnostic and surgical recovery task force did not widely publicize the cost-free service patients can voluntarily sign up to receive.

The two new clinics accepting patient referrals from Manitoba are the Cambie Surgical Centre in Vancouver and the Clearpoint Don Mills Surgical Unit in Toronto.

No patients have been sent to either facility yet, but the potential exists for 200 surgeries to be completed at each site over the next two years, a task force spokesperson said Friday.

“We are working directly with surgeons to ensure that patients are aware of the option to receive care from one of our partners if they choose,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

Opposition Leader Wab Kinew said it’s possible the change was not publicized owing to Cambie Surgical Centre chief executive officer’s legal fight for the rights of patients to pay for private medical care.

“Part of the lack of transparency is that the government probably doesn’t want to talk about who one of these providers is,” the Fort Rouge NDP MLA said.

Cambie CEO Dr. Brian Day spent more than a decade in court challenging the British Columbia Medicare Protection Act. He and others argued wait times in the publicly funded system amounted to a breach of a patients’ rights to life, liberty and security of person under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The Supreme Court of B.C. dismissed the constitutional challenge in 2020 and last year the provincial Court of Appeal upheld the ruling. Last month, the Supreme Court of Canada said it would not hear an appeal.

At the time, the doctor advocated for Canada to bring its system in line with other publicly funded systems that have complementary health care available through legal private insurance.

Kinew said he is thankful that challenge failed.

“The Cambie clinic is one of the big crusaders against public health care in this country,” he said. “The government probably recognizes that that’s not in keeping with the values of most Manitobans.”

The task force spokesperson did not respond when asked why the options have not been promoted to Manitobans through a news release or press conference.

Manitoba previously inked contracts with Ontario’s Big Thunder Orthopedic Associates in Dryden and Kenora to perform hip and knee replacements.

It also has contracts with three U.S. hospitals for various orthopedic surgeries: the Cleveland Clinic Lutheran Hospital in Ohio, Sanford Health in Fargo and University of California San Francisco Health.

Manitoba is also sending patients to the Mayo Clinic’s locations in Rochester, Minn., and Phoenix for cardiac electrophysiology.

In the 2022-23 fiscal year, at least 290 surgeries were performed through out-of-province agreements.

The Manitoba government has not released what it has spent on the task force’s out-of-province surgical initiatives.

Patients travelling for surgery must cover accommodations, transportation and meals but will be reimbursed by the government according to pre-defined limits, the province said.

According to the government, the task force is building capacity within the health-care system while inking contracts with hospitals elsewhere to get people the surgeries they need sooner.

“An exponential amount of procedures are completed in Manitoba (over 26,500 through request for supply arrangement alone) when compared to completed out of province procedures, which are a short-term measure to tackle wait lists while we’re building capacity in the province,” the spokesperson said.

Kinew described the new contracts as concerning, saying the task force should be focusing its efforts and money on implementing proposals brought forward by Manitoba doctors.

Recently, the task force faced criticism from physicians for prioritizing private health-care options at the expense of the public system, and for reams of red tape they say prevented their proposals from advancing.

Health Minister Audrey Gordon has denied private service providers are given preferential treatment.

“It doesn’t seem like the first step should be to go out of province,” Kinew said. “It seems like the first step should be to listen to surgeons who have local solutions to provide Manitobans with the procedures they need.”

— With files from The Canadian Press

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca