Four Sask. players named to Canada world junior hockey championship team
Dec 14, 2024
Berkly Catton, Brayden Yager, Caden Price and Tanner Howe were all named.
Saskatchewan set a surgical record recently, the Ministry of Health says, with more than 95,700 procedures performed over 12 months.
According to the ministry, the record for the highest number of surgeries in a 12-month period was set between April 1, 2023 and March 31, 2024, surpassing a similar record set last year by nearly 6,000 surgeries.
The ministry said it’s placing “particular emphasis” on knee and hip replacements, with the volume increasing from 6,300 to 7,100 in 2023-24.
“The volume of joint replacement procedures performed in this fiscal year (April 1, 2023, to March 31, 2024) was 50 per cent higher than the pre-COVID annual volume, in 2019-20,” the ministry noted in a statement.
A centralized referral intake for hip and knee replacements was recently launched in Saskatchewan in an effort to speed up those procedures even further.
Surgical waiting lists are also growing shorter, the ministry added, with a 14 per cent drop in patients awaiting a procedure compared to the end of March, 2023.
Dr. Michael Kelly, head of surgery for the Saskatchewan Health Authority, said he credits the increase in surgeries to “the overall commitment” by all members of the province’s surgical teams.
“Their dedication is what has made reaching this milestone possible,” Kelly said in a statement. “As a surgical program we want to continue to empower the people of Saskatchewan to be more engaged in their own unique surgical journey.”
Of the surgeries performed in Saskatchewan, about 15 per cent are normally completed by a private, publicly funded surgical provider. But that number has increased to roughly 18 per cent as the government pushes ahead to reduce wait times and tackle long backlogs that built up during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The province is aiming to increase those numbers even further this year, with an additional $2.28 million in the recent budget earmarked for boosting surgical volumes.
“Strategies to increase surgical capacity include developing focused improvements on orthopedics, investing in health human resources and expanding involvement of private sector partners in surgical service delivery,” the ministry added.