More surgeries were performed in British Columbia in the 2021/22 fiscal year than any other year in the province's history, as the province worked to reschedule surgeries that had been postponed due to the pandemic.
Back on March 18, 2020, B.C.'s Ministry of Health announced it would be postponing all “non-urgent” scheduled surgeries, to ensure enough hospital capacity as the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic hit the province.
On May 7 of that same year, Premier John Horgan and Health Minister Adrain Dix announced the province's “Surgical Renewal Commitment,” to clear a backlog of 30,000 postponed surgeries. The province's surgeries weren't fully back up and running until mid-June though.
Two years later, 99.8% of those first-wave postponed surgeries have now been completed.
Back in May 2020, Dix noted the renewal plan was “highly vulnerable to external forces,” like the possibility of a second wave in the fall of that year. After a handful of surges of COVID-19 over the past two years, 96.2% of surgeries postponed in the province's second and third waves have now been completed, while 78.9% of surgeries postponed due to the fourth and fifth waves, along with extreme weather events, have been completed.
Throughout the 2021/22 fiscal year – April 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022 – 337,560 scheduled and unscheduled surgeries were performed across the province, the highest number ever completed in the province.
This was 21,284 more than the first year of surgery renewals and 7,155 more than the 2019/20 fiscal year.
Minister Dix said Wednesday there have been no surgery delays in the province over the past four weeks, and from April 3-9, 7,379 surgeries were completed in B.C. This is 395 more than were completed in the same week three years ago.
To aid in the surgery renewal, the province has hired and trained 400 new perioperative nurses and 100 medical device reprocessing technicians. Taking into account turnover, the province has 299 net new nurses and 55 technicians in the past year.
Additionally, the province has recruited 81 net new anaesthetists and 11 GP anaesthetists in the past two years.
A number of hospital-specific “initiatives” are ongoing across the province to increase operating room time and capacity. Of a total of 84 completed, ongoing and paused initiates, 29 are ongoing in the Interior Health region, while one is paused. The lone paused initiative comes from Creston, after the hospital lost access to a surgeon.
