Island Health has made remarkable progress in reducing the surgical backlog caused by the COVID-19 outbreak.
Between March 16 and May 7, 30,000 surgeries were postponed, provincewide. Of these, 4,000 were on Vancouver Island.
While most were “elective” procedures — meaning urgent operations still went ahead — many patients were forced to endure periods of prolonged pain and suffering.
These postponements were imposed to free up thousands of hospital beds in preparation for a flood of COVID patients. That flood never materialized.
Across the province, COVID hospitalizations never exceeded 160 on any given day. The most recent count is 155.
A more balanced policy would have been to proceed on a day-to-day basis, freeing up just enough beds to cope with the virus, along with a good safety margin.
In any event, on May 7 the shutdown was lifted, and Island Health began a crash re-opening at all eight hospitals that offer elective surgeries. Each is performing at full capacity, a couple at over-capacity.
As well, two private surgical facilities have been contracted to carry out publicly funded procedures, such as dental and eye surgery.
Additional staff have been hired, extra operating rooms have been equipped and opened, and some hospitals are doing surgeries seven days a week. Seasonal closures have been cancelled, and staff are working overtime hours.
As a result, 98 per cent of patients who were on the waiting list when the shutdown was imposed have either had their surgeries completed, or have a new date for their procedure.
This is the fastest recovery rate of any health authority in B.C.
The unanswered question is what lies ahead. Recent weeks have seen huge increases in the daily COVID case count.
At the beginning of the outbreak, 60 or 70 cases were being reported per day. Now we’re seeing daily counts in the 550-plus range, as the second wave crests.
It’s clear these are somewhat geographically clustered. Almost half the new cases are in the hard-hit Fraser health region.
Vancouver Island continues to be spared the worst of the crisis.
It also appears our health-care system is reacting more quickly, and effectively, as new infections crop up. Treatment regimes have clearly improved, and patients are being diagnosed more quickly.
We see this in the far lower number of hospitalizations, despite the surge in infections.
There is also a growing realization among public health leaders that efforts to fight the virus must be balanced with the need to preserve a degree of normalcy.
This has resulted in a move toward more narrowly focused measures to control the outbreak.
Over past few years, a dominant issue in health care in B.C., and elsewhere in Canada, has been wait times for elective surgery.
We worry about long delays for needed care. We hear stories of friends and neighbours who have had to wait, sometimes for years.
And we hear elected officials promise to do something about wait times and fail to make good.
At a time when there seems to be so little good news on the health-care front, Island Health’s success in ramping up surgeries deserves our applause.
Administrators have worked to set up scheduling and services.
Health-care workers have come in on weekends and holidays.
Doctors and their staff have worked more flexibly to evaluate patients, organize their care and perform procedures.
Hopefully, the lessons learned from the surgical renewal strategy will be useful in providing more timely responses to other health-care challenges that will inevitably arise in the future.