Nova Scotia Health approaching goal of reduced surgical waitlist
The interim head of the provincial health authority says enough progress has been made to reduce the surgical backlog in Nova Scotia that she's not looking over her shoulder.
In December of 2022, Karen Oldfield vowed before the legislature's health committee — first asking for a Bible to swear upon before crossing her heart in the absence of the Good Book — that the backlog would be reduced by 10,000 people by mid-2025. At the time, the list stood at about 22,000 people.
Such a decrease would bring the province in line with national benchmarks for surgical waitlists.
"I'm not going to hell," Oldfield joked with reporters Friday following an appearance on a panel at a Halifax Chamber of Commerce luncheon to discuss innovation in health care.
"We are 1,500 surgeries away from what we would consider to be an appropriate [waitlist]. With any luck, we will hit that this year."
Statistics released by Nova Scotia Health show the province's waitlist as of April 1 of this year was 15,769 people. That's down from 17,369 people the same time the year before, and 19,917 people as of April 1, 2023.
The procedures with the largest number of people waiting are cataract extraction (3,564), knee replacement (1,274) and hip replacement (783).
Oldfield said the progress comes down to the health authority's ability to make a plan and stick to it.
"There's no magic," she said. "It's focus and discipline to do it."
Although the health authority announced in 2023 a premium for doctors willing to work outside traditional hours in order to cut into the backlog, Oldfield said the biggest factor in making progress has been getting staffing levels back to where they needed to be coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We did lose a lot of staff. Not just because of COVID, but people — they burn out, they age out, they retire. So we've been through a period of resurgence."
Oldfield said she would like to see more surgeries happening during off-hours, but there needs to be a certain level of staffing to be able to make that work and take full advantage of available operating room time and equipment.
"When we have assets, you want to use your assets," she said. "And when they sit idle, that's not a good thing. So we still have lots of time across the province that these could be used."
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