REGINA — The Saskatchewan NDP are calling on the Ministry of Health to reevaluate its recently announced plan to address the province’s surgical waitlist by utilizing private clinic spaces.
Health Minister Paul Merriman announced on Dec. 9 that the health authority will work to reduce surgical wait times, currently backlogged with upwards of 35,000 patients due to COVID-10 cancellations, to three months by 2030.
The ministry has issued a request for proposals seeking contracts with private surgical services to prop up the public system’s capacity, to support a large increase in surgical volume over the next four years.
Opposition leader Ryan Meili calls this goal “magical thinking” from Merriman and the ministry, as the capacity and the staffing levels needed currently does not exist in the private sector. He also criticized the timeline of the plan, saying that eight years is "too slow" to address the critical needs of patients who have already been delayed care.
Utilizing private clinics may offer some aid, said Meili, but not to the scale the NDP feels the ministry is suggesting.
“There is no parallel private system just sitting there ready to do the work,” said Meili. “[The plan offered] is too dependent on a workforce and set of facilities in the private system that just don’t exist.”
Meili said that more consultation needs to be done at the table with leaders in the medical profession to instead increase capacity within the already existent public system.
“Use what we have in terms of facilities more effectively and efficiently,” suggested Meili. “We can work with doctors and nurses to efficiently use and prioritize services that need to be done.”
Allowing a temporary shift to private contracting for surgical capacities could also be a quiet gateway to permanent changes to a user-pay model, added Meili.
“I think a wholesale privatization like the minister is talking about is very dangerous,” said Meili. “Why would we go down that road and potentially, very likely, wind up getting stuck locked into using that private model, get more into user-pay, as this government has shown us they want to do."
The NDP feels that immediate work also needs to begin to recruit and retain health care staff within the workforce, to make any kind of expansion possible.
Numerous health care workers have left their profession in the last few years due to unmitigated stress and strain, said Meili, and more attention needs to be paid to solving that problem for employees.
The Ministry of Health could not provide a number when asked how much the surgical recovery plan may cost the province. Meili said that any plan that includes temporary private contracts will cost taxpayers more than the investment needed to expand public services.
“It is extremely costly to let people sit waiting for surgery to let them get worse and wind up in hospital and cost even more for their care,” said Meili.
“We are talking about a major investment that’s required, one that could go into establishing more infrastructure, more capacity in our health care system for the long-term, or it can be siphoned off as profit to a company that doesn’t end up building up our long-term ability to respond to people’s care.”
