COVID-19 surgery delays can be done without overburdening workers, say experts
Global News
Almost 560,000 fewer surgeries were performed over the first 16 months of the pandemic compared to 2019, according to figures from the Canadian Institute for Health Information.
COVID-19 has thrown Canada’s already struggling health-care system into chaos, forcing impossible choices when it comes to how to rebuild once the pandemic has ebbed.
Hospitals were forced to cancel elective surgeries during pandemic peaks, making already protracted lists now so long physicians are concerned patients will die while they wait.
Meanwhile nurses are burnt out from the last year and a half of operating in a pandemic to the point that they’re exiting the industry in droves, leaving hospitals and health systems with the distasteful choice to either plow through surgeries or shore up nursing staff.
Almost 560,000 fewer surgeries were performed over the first 16 months of the pandemic compared to 2019, according to the latest figures from the Canadian Institute for Health Information. And the cost of addressing those backlogs is expected to run into the billions.
But a Harvard professor from the former Soviet Union with an affinity for Canada claims he has the solution, and it’s already working in some Ontario hospitals.
In extremely oversimplified terms: make surgeons work weekends.
“It means that you reduce the waiting time for surgery in Canada,” said Eugene Litvak, president of the non-profit Institute for Health Care Optimization in Massachusetts.
“It means that more patients will get treated.”