Almost 7,000 calls have gone out to B.C. patients to determine who wants to rebook some of the tens of thousands of surgeries and screenings that were postponed to make hospital beds available for those with COVID-19.
Patients are being rescheduled based on priority, as determined by their surgeons.
B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix expects it will take between 17 and 24 months to clear a backlog of 30,298 patients whose elective surgeries were cancelled or weren鈥檛 scheduled.
Those patients joined those who were already waiting, bringing the total surgical waitlist in the province to 93,000. An additional 24,000 patients would have typically been added to the waitlist from March 16 to May 3, but weren鈥檛 because of COVID-19 restrictions.
Since May 7, staff at the province鈥檚 six health authorities have contacted 6,884 people 鈥渢o discuss the rescheduling of surgeries and to discuss where they are and what they would like to do with respect to their surgeries,鈥� Dix said Thursday. 鈥淭hat work is continuing and accelerating every day.鈥�
More than 1,100 patients were called in the 91原创 Island Health Authority region.
Island Health says of the postponed surgeries and other procedures in the province, about 4,000 are in the Island region, which suggests fewer than one-third of patients have so far been called.
The first year of the surgical renewal plan will cost an estimated $250 million. About 75 per cent of the cost will be for labour, as more surgeons 鈥� especially anesthetists 鈥� and nurses, as well as cleaners and office assistants, are hired. The goal is to recruit about 400 nurses, which includes hiring graduating nurses and offering full-time hours to part-time nurses.
Island Health announced Thursday that more than 330聽nursing graduates will soon be working at health authority locations 鈥� 312 have been hired and 20 more nursing graduates are in the placement process.
Hours will be expanded, with surgeries and procedures done seven days a week, and there will be extended weekday hours to 6聽p.m. New and unused spaces will be opened, and private clinics will be used for publicly funded day surgeries, such as cataract surgery.
Surgeries will be scheduled with added time to accommodate additional cleaning and infection-control measures, said Island Health.
Dix said the first goal was to touch base with the patients affected by the COVID-19 surgery cancellations.
鈥淚 think it鈥檚 fair to say 鈥� that there are some people who have apprehension about going into hospitals right now. I think it鈥檚 fair to say that that apprehension is less in some places 鈥� probably in some places where there鈥檚 been less COVID-19 than others.鈥�
Island hospitals are now much closer to full capacity and to pre-COVID levels for emergency-room visits than facilities in other regions, said Dix.
In part, that鈥檚 because of elderly patients in hospital beds awaiting transfer to long-term care beds or assisted living residences, for example, in the north Island, Dix said.
By June 15, all available operating rooms are expected to be running at full capacity. The extension of weekday hours and adding Saturdays and Sundays to the schedule will unfold from June until Oct. 15.
While elective surgeries were cancelled, 17,308 urgent surgeries were completed in B.C. from March 16 through May 3, including 3,437 on 91原创 Island.
