Canadian hospitals from coast to coast have performed over half a million few surgeries compared with previous years between March 2020 and June 2021 due to issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Ontario an average of 21,000 fewer surgeries per month were performed during that time compared to in 2019.
This from new data recently released by the Canadian Institute for Health Information.
Speaking on AM800's The Morning Drive, Vice President of Surgery and Women's & Children's Services at Windsor Regional Hospital, Rosemary Petrakos, says she's not surprised by those numbers based on what they've seen locally.
"As of Wednesday the number of patients that have seen a surgeon that are waiting for a surgical date is just about 3,000 patients that are waiting," she continued. "We're down 25 per cent of our surgeries compared to 19-20, 4,000 cases, and we have 3,000 people waiting for surgery dates."
Petrakos says when they're having to alternate between ramping up and down due to disruptions to the hospital system, they always go to surgeons who know their patients and ask them to prioritize.
"Looking at who's urgent, emergent, who are priority two and three cases? Also we have to consider the capacity within the hospital. There was a push during waves one, two and three to focus on day surgeries because of capacity. It was the patients that needed an overnight stay, or two or three days, that suffered."
That led to the hospital having to get creative to meet certain needs.
Petrakos says some of the ideas that they've implemented include wide awake foot and ankle surgery, and same day home joints.
They joined with Ontario Health West, and 17 other hospitals, to have standardized criteria, anaesthesia protocols, post-stop procedures for the discharged patients and same day hip and knew replacements.
"Our target was to look at 30 per cent of our total hip and knee patients. And right now for knee replacement, 35 per cent of our knees are going home same day. For hip replacement, 30 per cent are going home and then we added shoulders, 65 per cent of our shoulder patients can now go home same day."
TAG: Petrakos says they're still only operating at 84 per cent of operating room capacity. In 2019, between the Met campus and Ouellette campus, there were 19 operating rooms but now they're only running 16 due to complications from health human resources and the system itself.
- with files from AM800's The Morning Drive