Waiting in surgery | A catch-up plan “over two to three years”, promises Dubé

(Quebec) Quebec wants to work twice as hard to catch up in particular on operations that have been pending for more than 12 months and is giving itself a year to return to the pre-pandemic level. For all operations, Christian Dubé intends to catch up within “two to three years”.

Fanny Levesque
The Press

Minister Christian Dubé specified on Wednesday the targets of his surgery catch-up plan during the study of his ministry’s budget appropriations. The list of Quebecers waiting to be put under the knife continues to grow, while their number now stands at some 160,000. Of this number, approximately 20,000 have been waiting for over a year, said the Minister health.

Christian Dubé had made known his intention to tackle the operations that had been pending for more than a year last February, but had not yet provided a timetable for doing so. No more than for all operations. It should be remembered that the Legault government was unable to achieve the targets set in its surgery catch-up plan presented in June 2021.

Questioned by the Liberal MP, Monsef Derraji, the Minister revealed that he hopes to return to the pre-pandemic level within a year, precisely for operations that have been pending for more than 12 months. This level was at the time around 3000, specified Mr. Dubé. “So we’re talking about getting back to that level in April 2023? asked Mr. Derraji. To which the Minister agreed.

“It’s a feat to have managed to maintain this volume at 20,000 despite the fifth and sixth waves,” said Mr. Dubé, who recalled that thousands of health care workers are absent from the network due to COVID-19. For the time being, some 8,900 employees are on the floor because of the virus. Due to offloading, the network conducts about 30,000 operations per month, rather than 40,000.

For operations that have been pending for less than a year, Christian Dubé hopes to make up for the delay caused by the pandemic within “two to three years”. The plan presented in June provided two years to achieve this.

In committee, Minister Dubé reiterated his wish to have recourse to the private sector in his catch-up plan. The Ministry of Health and Social Services maintains about twenty agreements with specialized medical clinics for operations. These agreements make it possible to carry out “about 80,000” operations, the Minister specified.

“Without these contracts, we would do 70% of surgeries in Quebec, whereas we currently do 85%. Moreover, that represents 99,000 surgeries performed since the start of the pandemic, ”said the cabinet of Christian Dubé.

Mr. Dubé did not offer more details during the commission on the measures he intends to put forward to speed up the pace, affirming that the main challenge remains the workforce. “We’re going to bring people back, it’s not a question of money,” he said on Wednesday.

His office later clarified that “recruiting and developing the workforce” is one of the “main principles of the Minister’s Health Plan” and that this “will certainly contribute to the resumption of surgical activities”. Quebec has also reinvested 400 million of the remuneration of medical specialists in the reduction of waiting lists for surgery.