Sask. patients wait longer for surgeries than all other Canadians, report says

Patients in Saskatchewan are still waiting longer than any other Canadians for hip and knee replacement surgeries.

That’s according to a report done by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI). It showed 30 per cent of patients in the province received knee replacements within six months and 43 per cent got hip replacements in that same time frame.

The Canadian average was 59 per cent for knee replacements being done within six months and 65 per cent for hip replacements in the same time frame during 2021.

The median wait time in Saskatchewan for knee replacements was 416 days while it was 234 days for hip replacements.

Throughout the country, the median average was 159 days for knees and 134 for hips.

These totals put Saskatchewan last among all provinces, with neighbouring Manitoba ranking second-last.

Data showing the percentage of how many Saskatchewan patients received certain surgeries in 2021. (CIHI data)

Health Minister Paul Merriman says the province continues to make efforts to tackle the issues surrounding the backlog.

“Those numbers are a bit of a concern,” Merriman said Tuesday. “We have a very detailed surgical plan that is both public and privately run and funded to make sure that we’re getting that capacity up to its maximum potential and getting our surgical backlog dealt with.”

Merriman announced in March a new surgical unit would be opened in Regina at the Pasqua Hospital which would be able to do up to 1,000 more surgeries per year.

The provincial government also announced in its 2022-23 budget it was putting an increase of $21.6 million toward the surgical backlog. The government’s goal is to get the waitlist back to pre-pandemic levels by March of 2025.

“Every week we’re adding more capacity,” Merriman said. “We had to make an investment like we did in our budget. We had to increase our ICUs, we had to increase our surgical capacity (and) we had to make a significant investment in our surgical backlog.

“We have done that with this budget. So COVID identified some concerns in the health-care system. Certainly surgeries and procedures were put on hold, so we have to get that back to a reasonable time that the people of Saskatchewan expect for their surgeries to be done.”

Merriman went on to explain that expanding access to publicly funded private orthopedic surgery in the province remains a priority in dealing with the backlog.

“We’re looking early summer for the request for proposal (RFP) to go out. We’re hoping for a very quick turnaround so we can get those up and running,” he said. “We’ve been talking to some of the surgical centres, some of the private ones, to be able to see what their capacity is and what they need as far as scope.

“Later on, probably in early summer, we’re going to announce an RFP for additional hips and knees out of Saskatoon. So this is certainly going to help out with the orthopedic side because those are the more complex surgeries.”

CIHI data from previous years shows surgery backlogs not being a new issue in the province, something Merriman acknowledges.

In 2020, 28 per cent of Saskatchewan patients got a knee replacement within six months and 40 per cent received a hip replacement in that same time frame.

Prior to the pandemic in 2019, 39 per cent received a knee replacement while 47 per cent received a hip replacement in a timely fashion.

Saskatchewan NDP Leader Ryan Meili says the Saskatchewan government still isn’t doing enough to deal with the issue.

“We have the worst situation in the country. It’s going to require a greater investment,” he said. “I don’t see us putting the level of investment required to get us up in time.

“This is a long-standing problem.”

Meili wants to see the money from the budget put into creating greater hospital capacity within the public health-care system rather than focus on the private route.