Travel-ready hip-replacement patient thwarted by task force end faces another year in agony

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After missing the surgical task force shutdown deadline by less than two weeks, Joanne Machado faces a year-long wait for a hip replacement at Grace Hospital.

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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/12/2023 (656 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After missing the surgical task force shutdown deadline by less than two weeks, Joanne Machado faces a year-long wait for a hip replacement at Grace Hospital.

She’d likely be headed out of province for surgery if the timing had been slightly different. The 56-year-old waited nine months to see a surgeon and got the confirmation on Nov. 13 that she needed a hip replacement.

By then, the Diagnostic and Surgical Recovery Task Force was on pause and under review by the NDP government.

While she was waiting for her first consultation with a surgeon, she tried to get scheduled for cross-border surgery via the task force, but was told she needed confirmation from her surgeon first.

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
                                Joanne Machado, who needs a hip replacement but was two weeks too late to get a surgery via the out-of-province task force is now facing a yearlong wait.

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS

Joanne Machado, who needs a hip replacement but was two weeks too late to get a surgery via the out-of-province task force is now facing a yearlong wait.

It came too late. The province made the decision to wind down the task force as of Nov. 1, so only patients who received a referral prior to that cutoff would be accepted for out-of-province procedures.

Even after she heard the Progressive Conservative-commissioned panel was under review, “there was still a glimmer of hope for me,” Machado said.

Then, it was dashed.

“I was so disappointed, just because I think I had been really setting myself up for that. I thought I would be a great candidate.”

“I was so disappointed, just because I think I had been really setting myself up for that. I thought I would be a great candidate.”–Joanne Machado

Relatively young, with no other health conditions apart from bad hips, Machado still works full time and would have support from her family to travel to a facility in North Dakota.

She wasn’t looking forward to driving back from Fargo with a surgical wound, but she was prepared to do it to end the rapidly worsening chronic pain that has slammed the brakes on her active lifestyle.

Without the option of cross-border surgery through a provincial referral — she can’t afford the $20,000 to $30,000 it would cost to seek private care outside of Manitoba — Machado faces another year’s wait for her first hip replacement. That’s on top of the year she’s already spent waiting for her consultation.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES
After missing the surgical task force shutdown deadline by less than two weeks, Joanne Machado faces a year-long wait for a hip replacement at Grace Hospital.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES

After missing the surgical task force shutdown deadline by less than two weeks, Joanne Machado faces a year-long wait for a hip replacement at Grace Hospital.

She got a referral to a surgeon last February, after doing everything she could think of on her own to heal her hip, including physiotherapy and acupuncture.

If the task force was not financially sustainable, as the current government has alleged, it makes sense to shut it down, Machado said — but not before helping the patients who are still waiting.

“If the politicians knew what it actually felt like when you’ve been waiting a year or two years, like some of the people who are worse off than me.” she said. “If it was their parent or grandparent, then surely they can come up with better solutions. Because it’s debilitating. It’s a constant, constant pain.”

“If the politicians knew what it actually felt like when you’ve been waiting a year or two years, like some of the people who are worse off than me.”–Joanne Machado

About 85,000 Manitobans received out-of-province surgeries or diagnostic tests through contracts arranged by the task force at clinics in the U.S. or other Canadian provinces, according to data shared by PC finance critic and Fort Whyte MLA Obby Khan.

Considering the thousands of Manitobans waiting for hip and knee replacements and the relatively small number that would have qualified to be sent out of province under the task force’s criteria, Machado questioned why those operations couldn’t continue while surgical capacity is built up here at home.

There’s been no word on what happened to the task force’s previously announced promise to create a provincewide data-management system that would comprehensively track wait times for all kinds of medical procedures throughout Manitoba. The most recent wait time information — recently republished by the province — is from August.

Patients need detailed, accurate and timely information about where exactly they stand on the wait lists, Machado said. A provincewide wait list by surgery type would also be helpful, rather than putting the onus on patients to try to call around and get an appointment with whichever surgeon has the shortest queue.

“There have to be better ways of doing this,” she said. “In this day and age, we have such an ability to track numbers, why are they such a mystery?”

The longer patients like her are waiting in pain and uncertainty, Machado said, the greater demand they put on the health-care system; ripple effects of deteriorating physical and mental health.

“Because of everything that it affects, you really have to fight to keep your mental health up…. You’re actually putting a different burden on the system.”

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Katie May

Katie May
Multimedia producer

Katie May is a multimedia producer for the Free Press.

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