Pandemic-caused cataract surgery backlog cleared, health minister says

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This article was published 15/11/2022 (673 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba government has caught up on cataract surgeries delayed during the COVID-19 pandemic though thousands of patients continue to wait longer for care than three years ago.

On Wednesday, Health Minister Audrey Gordon said a backlog of more than 1,200 people needing corrective surgery to restore their sight was cleared at the end of September.

“The pandemic backlog for cataract surgery has now been fully eliminated,” Gordon said.

According to the province’s diagnostic and surgical recovery task force, the number of people waiting for cataract surgery over and above pre-pandemic wait-lists was about 1,200 in February.

However, Doctors Manitoba, a physicians advocacy organization, estimated the backlog to have included as many as 4,800 people in September 2021, more than a year before the province began reporting pandemic delays.

Gordon boasted about the province’s progress on the file during question period, as the Opposition railed against the Progressive Conservatives’ promises to prop up the public health system with private health-care providers.

In the throne speech delivered Tuesday by Lt.-Gov. Anita Neville, the Tories pledged to secure more health-care partnerships with the private sector.

“Just like (former premier) Brian Pallister, the premier is trying to bring in more cuts and to privatize health care in Manitoba,” New Democratic Party Leader Wab Kinew said during question period, the first of the new legislative session.

“We need to hear clearly from the premier — does she plan to privatize our public health-care system, just like Brian Pallister did with physiotherapy?”

Under Pallister, the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority eliminated outpatient physiotherapy services in 2017 as part of cost-cutting efforts.

Kinew also argued the privatization of air-ambulance services has led to poor patient outcomes, referencing 31-year-old Krystal Mousseau, who died in May 2021 following a failed airlift attempt in Brandon via a privately contracted aircraft service.

Premier Heather Stefanson brushed off Kinew’s assertion, saying the New Democrats are putting “ideology over patient care.”

“Even (former NDP premier) Gary Doer in the early 2000s saw fit to do the right thing and contract out with the Maples Surgical Centre,” Stefanson said. “What the leader of the Opposition is saying is that Gary Doer was wrong.

“There’s one thing that’s very apparent. This leader of the Opposition is no Gary Doer.”

Maples Surgical Centre is one of three local, private facilities contracted by the province to perform procedures as part of the effort to address the backlog.

In the 2021-2022 fiscal year, Western Surgical Centre and Vision Group were contracted to perform 4,850 cataract procedures as the province outsourced about 9,000 cases to private and public organizations at a cost of more than $8.8 million.

This year the province inked contracts to move as many as 20,000 surgeries and other procedures out of the public system.

While the pandemic pileup of cataract cases has been cleared, there remained at least 5,711 people waiting for procedures at the end of September, which was slightly lower than the number of people waiting in September 2019.

However, those patients are still spending longer on the wait-list than patients pre-pandemic, with the median wait at 15 weeks.

Gordon was unable to say Wednesday whether the province will continue to use private surgery centres to bring the wait-list down even further, but said her goal is to eliminate “all backlogs.”

“How we do that will be in consultation with the diagnostic and surgical recovery task force and the surgeons across the public system,” she said, adding those conversations have likely already begun.

Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont said the province needs to do better than return to pre-pandemic wait-lists. He questioned whether complex cataract cases are being seen in a timely way due to the reliance on private clinics and a lack of investment in the public system.

“It had been getting worse for three years straight before the pandemic,” Lamont said. “They set themselves a low bar in the first place.”

According to the government’s wait times dashboard, nearly 10,000 cases were still backlogged in the eight areas reported public by the province as of September.

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca