'Half-baked': Sask. NDP slams plan to send some hip, knee replacements out-of-province
Official Opposition Leader Carla Beck and NDP health critic Vicki Mowat called Thursday for the province to scrap its proposed private surgery plan.
"If Scott Moe would listen to the experts or even his head of surgery, he’d know that creating a private surgical clinic relying on the already scarce workforce simply won’t work,” Beck said in a news release.
“Scott Moe already had to send Saskatchewan patients out of province in the height of the pandemic for care. What’s remarkable is he’s now actually planning to do the same with this latest half-baked plan. We don’t need to rely on other provinces’ health systems to care for our own, we need to fix our public health system here at home.”
On Monday, the Sask Party government announced it had set a target to perform 7,000 more surgeries in 2022-23 than the highest-ever level, to reduce the surgical backlog.
To help meet those targets, the Saskatchewan Health Authority is exploring expansion with private sector partners. It will issue a request for proposals to build an orthopedic surgery facility focused on increasing operating room and bed capacity for in-patient joint replacements and a variety of day surgery procedures, according to a news release.
The government is also exploring a temporary, out-of-province surgical initiative for hip and knee replacements, in which the health authority would contract a private surgical facility to perform publicly funded orthopedic surgeries. It would be offered to patients on a voluntary basis, who have waited for the longest for their joint replacement procedures.
The Sask. NDP is also calling on the province to expand operating and diagnostic hours and incentivize and fund more full-time scarce positions including diagnostics, anesthesiologists and operating room nurses to help manage the surgical backlog.
Merriman said in a statement to CTV News that privately delivered surgeries have been an important part of Saskatchewan’s publicly funded surgical system for more than a decade. Since 2010-11 private clinics have delivered more than 128,000 publicly funded surgeries, he said.
"The NDP’s proposal would deny near-term relief to long-waiting surgical patients to satisfy their ideological opposition to the private delivery of publicly funded health services. Our government is taking an all of the above approach to addressing surgical wait times."
He said the province is working to expand private and public capacity in Saskatchewan over the medium and long term by recruiting more staff for the public system and procuring additional private capacity to provide low-risk elective procedures that do not require hospital stays.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
![](https://www.ctvnews.ca/polopoly_fs/1.6978604.1721996942!/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_800/image.jpg)
Paris Olympics begin with unique opening ceremony along the Seine
The Paris Summer Olympics officially get underway today with a unique opening ceremony. Instead of marching into a stadium, representatives from more than 200 competing countries will enter the Games on boats along the River Seine.
BREAKING Canada Soccer head investigating 'systemic ethical shortcoming' amid spying scandal
Canada Soccer chief executive officer Kevin Blue said he was investigating a potential 'systemic ethical shortcoming' within the program but has not considered pulling the women's soccer team from the Paris Olympics due to a drone spying scandal.
'She led it the whole way': 18-year-old B.C. woman leads hikers to safety in Jasper National Park
As fire threatened people in Jasper National Park, Colleen Knull sprung into action.
DEVELOPING Trudeau, with Australian and New Zealand PMs, pen letter renewing ceasefire calls for Gaza
Prime ministers of Canada, New Zealand and Australia released a letter renewing calls for an “urgent ceasefire” in Gaza on Friday morning.
Arson attacks paralyze French high-speed rail network hours before start of Olympics
Outgoing French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said that sabotage and arson that hit key parts of France's high speed rail network on the eve of the Olympics had 'a clear objective: blocking the high speed train network.'
Latest updates on wildfires in Jasper National Park: Rain, cooler weather limiting spread
Cool and wet weather is making a difference in Jasper National Park.
'He was just gone': Police ramp up search for vulnerable 3-year-old boy in Mississauga, Ont.
Police in Mississauga are conducting a full-scale search of the city’s biggest park for a non-verbal toddler who went missing Thursday evening. Sgt. Jennifer Trimble told reporters Friday morning that there has been no trace of three-year-old Zaid Abdullah since 6:20 p.m., when he was last seen with his parents in Erindale Park, near Dundas Street West and Mississauga Road.
Sunken treasure: Is the champagne nestled in a 19th-century shipwreck still fit for a toast?
A team of Polish divers has discovered the wreckage of an old sailing ship loaded “to the brim” with luxury goods including porcelain items and about 100 bottles of Champagne and mineral water about 58 meters (190 feet) deep off the Swedish coast.
opinion 'Deadpool and Wolverine' review: A love letter to a bygone era
'Deadpool and Wolverine' is a showcase for the bromance stylings of its stars, who pull out all the stops to cap Fox's Marvel movies.