NEWS FILE PHOTO - Medicine Hat Regional Hospital is seen in this 2019 photo.
gslade@medicinehatnews.com@MHNGillianSlade
In the last two weeks Alberta Health Services has been working on addressing a backlog of non-emergency surgeries that were delayed during the pandemic.
On March 18 a decision was made to stop all surgeries except for emergency surgeries in Alberta. This resulted in a 60 per cent reduction of surgeries or about 3,500 a week across the province, said Katherine Chubbs, chief south zone officer with AHS. In that time frame about 20,000 emergency surgeries took place.
A total of 55 surgeries are scheduled to take place at Medicine Hat Regional Hospital this week, said Chubbs. Since the relaunch of surgeries on May 4 a total of 39 surgeries have already taken place in the south zone.
The focus for those non-emergency surgeries has been specifically related to urology, gynecology, orthopedic and some that fall into the category of general surgery, said Chubbs.
“We are trying to make sure that we balance the capacity plans for COVID with those required surgeries,” said Chubbs, noting they are working on a six-week plan and will re-evaluate needs over time.
The south zone has a plan to have 150 beds available for COVID-19 hospital admissions. This was determined to be appropriate based on the expected surge in cases at the peak of the pandemic.
“We haven’t seen that surge… but we still have to be careful,” said Chubbs. “It’s an unpredictable disease at this point in time. We have to make sure we are prepared to respond to COVID first before we introduce things (surgeries) that are elective.”
Each week those beds allocated for COVID are being reviewed to balance the demand for surgery, she said.
