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Hundreds of surgeries have been postponed or cancelled in a Victoria hospital due to an operating room about to undergo a two-month closure.
The Royal Jubilee Hospital is closing one of its 10 operating rooms from Sept. 5 to Oct. 27.
B.C. health officials said the temporary closure is due to staffing issues.
“We just don’t have enough nurses to get up to our normal levels,” Island Health CEO Kathy MacNeil told Global News.
The closure has led to 312 surgeries being postponed, although B.C. health minister Adrian Dix hopes it will be less than that.
“We are going to work very hard with our surgeons, (and) work hard on recruitment to make sure this has the least possible effect, and if we are able to open sooner … we will do that,” Dix said.
Dix met with staff at the hospital earlier this week, and acknowledged it’s not ideal to cancel any surgeries, though he said, overall, the system is performing well.
For perspective, there were 4,879 surgeries done across B.C. during the week of Aug. 6-12, 2022. During the same time span in 2023, there were 5,465 surgeries.
“There is pressure across the system because there is demand in the system,” Dix said.
“We’ve added significantly across the province … operating room nurses and everyone else … we’ve added more surgeries and there are more people needing surgeries.”
But the opposition is quick to point out they are still hearing every day from people waiting too long.
“Whether it’s waiting for a diagnostic test, waiting for a referral to a specialist, or whether it’s getting a family doctor … all of those are absolutely in crisis,” Shirley Bond, BC United’s health critic said.
This comes as the province is bracing for respiratory illness season and even more pressure on staffing.
From 2019 to 2020, there were about 9,000 healthcare workers away at least one day per week, about six per cent of the health workforce. Last year, it was 15,000 workers, or about nine-and-a-half per cent.
And on top of that, more than 800,000 people in B.C. still don’t have a family doctor.
“If people were able to access more timely primary care, perhaps more preventative medicine could help avoid this higher demand of surgeries,” said Camille Currie, president of BC Health Care Matters.
BC Health Care Matters began as a grassroots patient advocacy group and has now grown into a campaign under the Canada Pacific (CP) Health Care Matters Society. Its mission is to campaign for timely access to a family doctor for every resident of B.C.
As for those who will have their surgeries cancelled or postponed at Royal Jubilee Hospital, the commitment is for them to be rescheduled as quickly as possible, according to the province.
© 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
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