Surgery and procedure backlogs from COVID-19 restrictions have been largely resolved at Bluewater Health, the head of the Sarnia-Lambton hospital group says.
“I’d say we are caught up,” said CEO and president Mike Lapaine. “The thing that would be impacting us is many of our neighbors aren’t.”
Pandemic-related staffing crunches in places like London and Windsor are causing a spillover effect into Sarnia’s hospital as people look for shorter waits, he said.
“So our wait lists are growing again,” he said, “but it’s not that we didn’t catch up from the pandemic. It’s just the overall system has just a lot of demand in it right now.”
A recent $827-million provincial investment for hospitals announced late last month for the April 2022-March 2023 fiscal year is expected to help target reducing those backlogs, he said.
Specifics of Bluewater Health’s $4.6-million share haven’t arrived yet, he said.
“I’m very thankful of course of the support the government has shown us to date,” he said. “They’ve been very supportive through the last two years of COVID. They’ve allowed us to balance our budget. And this investment I believe looks to be more along the lines of … catching up on our backlog of surgeries and diagnostic imaging procedures, etc.”
A press release from Sarnia-Lambton MPP Bob Bailey said the money will “ensure all publicly funded hospitals receive a minimum two per cent increase to their operating budgets to help them better meet patient needs, while building a stronger, more resilient health-care system .”
A Ministry of Health statement forwarded from a spokesperson in Bailey’s office said details about the $4.6 million will likely arrive in “likely a couple weeks.”
It’s unclear yet if a $474,000 Surgical Innovation Fund announcement, via Bailey this week, is also part of that larger funding announcement, Lapaine said.
The same ministry comments forwarded through Bailey’s office suggested the amounts are separate.
“For the (Surgical Innovation Fund ) funding, this wouldn’t have been included in the Bluewater announcement a while back, no,” it said.
About $122,000 in the Surgical Innovation Fund announcement is going to a diagnostic imaging archive system for things like X-ray and MRI scans, leading to quicker procedures, Lapaine said.
There’s also $130,000 for breast cancer surgical innovation and $222,000 earmarked for urology relocation, part of developing a urology cancer clinic on the second floor of Sarnia’s hospital, he said.
“Those are all targeted towards trying to increase throughput of some of the surgeries that everyone believes have been deferred or delayed due to the pandemic.”
Similar innovation funding helped Bluewater Health move some hip and knee replacement surgeries from inpatient to same-day procedures in 2021, Lapaine said.
Those types of surgeries, not considered urgent or emergency, couldn’t have happened otherwise while there were restrictions limiting inpatient bed use, he said.
“Interestingly, we did pretty much the same number of hip and knee replacement surgeries in the last fiscal year as we did prior to the pandemic,” Lapaine said.
In a press release, Bailey said the Surgical Innovation Fund “investment will enable our local hospital to recover as quickly as possible, restoring and enhancing important health services that have been affected by recent pandemic-related challenges.”