'Notoriously untransparent': Sask. budget to reduce surgery backlog has no plan behind it, expert says
CTV
Saskatchewan has no real strategy to perform more surgeries, according to a health policy analyst.
Saskatchewan has no real strategy to perform more surgeries, according to a health policy analyst.
The province is spending $42 million for 6,000 more surgeries. It aims to conduct a total of 100,000 surgeries, and reduce the waitlist to its pre-pandemic level by March 2024.
“They’re pretty silent on how they're going to do that,” Steven Lewis, an adjunct professor of health policy at Simon Fraser University, told CTV News.
With a shortage of doctors and nurses in Saskatchewan, Lewis wonders how the province will hit its surgery target.
“A surgeon is a surgeon, and whether the surgeon is doing the procedure in a private facility, or the public facility, you're going to have a finite capacity,” Lewis says.
Surgeries are one of the only core medicare services that get contracted to private practices. Surgeons can operate in both publicly funded and private facilities.
Lewis questions the province’s motive for outsourcing surgery to the private sector. He says the contracts are “notoriously untransparent.”
