New spine program aims to cut surgery wait times

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This article was published 23/04/2024 (549 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A spine care program announced by the province Tuesday seeks to speed up surgeries and lessen the suffering of Manitobans waiting for relief.

“Until now, folks living with spine pain or trauma had no other choice but to suffer for months — for years in some cases — while waiting to to be seen, never mind waiting for surgeries,” Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said Tuesday at Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre. “Our government has developed a comprehensive, multifaceted provincial spine program aimed at delivering timely care to patients with spinal conditions,” Asagwara said.

As part of the $12-M investment by the provincial government, three additional spine surgeons have been hired at HSC, Concordia Hospital and Brandon Regional Health Centre. Each hospital has been outfitted with new, state-of-the-art surgical equipment to “dramatically improve patient care” while reducing wait times and backlogs, the minister said.

The program will also increase the number of surgeries that can be done by more than 50 per cent starting next month, Asagwara said.

The new equipment — the Stryker guidance system — combines imaging navigation and produces 3D images in the operating room while the patient is being operated on, said Dr. Ed Buchel, Shared Health’s provincial surgical lead and HSC’s surgical site director.

“It allows the surgeon to make better judgments in the OR to reduce complications and improve (a patient’s) length of stay,” Buchel said.

The minimally-invasive equipment has been in place at HSC since February.

“The first patients treated with it were discharged the same day and walking around. Prior to this, a longer incision meant a minimum week-long stay and substantially longer recovery.”

The existing spine assessment clinic, staffed by physiotherapists in partnership with surgeons, will be fully integrated into the new provincial spine program. Access centres will also provide additional imaging technology.

A comprehensive provincial spine program will make it easier for patients and referring primary care providers to access spinal care, said Buchel. The spine care team will have the central intake and improved data analytics to manage wait lists and optimize the use of the increased and enhanced capacity. More surgeons, in co-ordinated clinics, will deliver more surgery with cutting edge technology, the surgeon said.

When asked how a short-staffed, strained health-care system can increase the number of spine surgeries by more than 50 per cent, Buchel said the solution is to remove “multiple roadblocks” to evaluating patients immediately.

“For those that need surgery, we’re increasing the capacity to actually deliver that care at multiple sites throughout the province and with the best equipment, so we decrease our length of stay,” said Buchel. “We have better flow through our system, so I’m not putting a person in the hospital for one or two weeks. They recover quicker. That helps other surgeries. The spinoff benefit to better care is better flow, pulling people out of the emergency rooms, (resulting in) less wait to be seen in all of the other areas of these hospitals that are overflowing with patients right now,” said Buchel.

“Better care by this one aspect of surgery improves everyone’s life because it takes pressure off many other aspects of our health care system — not to mention it’s better care for that patient.”

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It also makes for a more attractive workplace, he said. “This environment allows us to recruit and retain the best surgeons to come to our province.”

The additional spine surgeons have been attracted to Manitoba in part by the HSC Foundation’s “operation excellence” — a $100-million plan to revitalize and refocus HSC as a surgical centre of excellence and innovation, said foundation president and CEO Jonathon Lyon.

“Surgeons and other health-care professionals want to go where they can do their best work,” Lyon said. He couldn’t say how much the HSC Foundation has donated to the new spine program, saying the bills aren’t in yet.

Progressive Conservative health critic Kathleen Cook congratulated the foundation and Buchel for Tuesday’s “good news announcement” that she said “builds on previous PC initiatives to expand the provincial spine assessment clinic.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

Carol Sanders
Legislature reporter

Carol Sanders is a reporter at the Free Press legislature bureau. The former general assignment reporter and copy editor joined the paper in 1997. Read more about Carol.

Every piece of reporting Carol produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.