Alberta has earmarked $618 million in its 2024 budget to address the province’s surgical backlog.
A total of $313 million has been designated for the Alberta Surgical Initiative Capital Program (ASI) over three years to boost the number of surgeries performed by opening new operating rooms across the province, Health Minister Adriana LaGrange said at a March 26 news conference. The money will also be used to expand existing operating rooms and purchase new equipment.
An additional $305 million has been set aside, aiming to enable Alberta Health Services to perform 310,000 surgeries this year, a nearly six percent increase over 2022-2023.
“We should not be seeing discrepancies in health-care delivery or in the quality of care across the province and every Albertan should be able to access surgical care within clinically recommended timelines,” Ms. LaGrange told reporters.
“Albertans deserve reliable health care and a new integrated system will improve patient outcomes and better support our world class health-care professionals, but it will take time and while we continue to engage with Albertans and advance our refocusing efforts, we need to take immediate steps to boost capacity, reduce wait times and find efficiencies to address the existing surgical backlog.”
If Alberta’s budget is passed, the $313 million in funding for ASI will be used to renovate surgical suites and support areas in Brooks, Calgary, Crowsnest Pass, Edmonton, Innisfail, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Olds, Rocky Mountain House, and Taber, Ms. LaGrange said.
Doctor recruitment remains an issue for the province but the health minister said that should not impact the ability to ramp up surgeries.
“My understanding is that we do have the staff in place,” she said. “Obviously there are certain aspects of staffing the workforce that are more challenging than others, particularly around anesthesia.”
She said Alberta Health Services (AHS) has been working to recruit more doctors, particularly anaesthesiologists.
AHS interim vice-president and chief operating officer Sean Chilton said the health agency is focusing on both Canadian and international recruitment.
“Workforce is always something we’re concerned about, but we continue to work hard at recruitment and retention,” he told reporters. “We’re starting to see some gains, but there is still some work to be done.”
One way the province plans to boost surgery numbers is by contracting up to 65,000 surgeries to publicly funded chartered surgical facilities, the health minister said. This, she said, would free up operating rooms in hospitals to handle more complex surgeries.
“They alleviate the stress on our hospitals so they can do the more complex surgeries,” Ms. LaGrange said. “But again, we want to make sure that they’re done within clinically approved timelines.”
If passed, the proposed budget will provide $4.4 billion in operating expense funding for acute care in 2024-2025, a $60 million increase from the province’s original forecast. The funding will include money for the Facilitated Access to Specialized Treatment (FAST) program.
FAST, which was launched two years ago, aims to give family doctors and other providers the ability to send referrals to a central team. Patients are then referred to the specialist with the shortest wait list, or to a specific surgeon if the patient chooses to wait longer.
The program currently supports urology, orthopedic, general and vascular surgery cases but will roll out to other areas, including gynecology, over the next three years.
