Burnaby surgeons will soon have an extra operating room to help clear up their long waitlists.
Fraser Health told the NOW this week that it will open a seventh OR in the local hospital in February and March.
The health authority announced in a press release Tuesday that it planned to provide 650 extra surgeries across the region by the end of March.
About 150 of those will be performed at Burnaby Hospital, according to Fraser Health director of surgery Dr. Peter Blair.
“We looked at the surgeons there and the cases that needed to get done, and that’s roughly what we’re looking at,” he told the NOW.
The move comes within two months of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation publishing two leaked documents about surgeries at the hospital.
The first was a memo from Blair and Fraser Health executive director Judith Hockney to surgeons across the health region.
Data included with the memo revealed that – as of Oct. 9 – 143 Burnaby Hospital patients had spent more than a year waiting for surgery, and another 1,004 had waited between six and 12 months.
(Under the province's pay-for-performance system, every patient who waits more than a year costs the health authority $1,400 in additional provincial funding. Burnaby Hospital was poised to cost Fraser Health $620,000 – more than any other hospital except Surrey Memorial.)
On Dec. 10, the taxpayers federation released a letter addressed to Blair and signed by 18 Burnaby surgeons who said they had lost faith in the management of Fraser Health surgical services.
They called on the health authority to increase surgical resources at Burnaby Hospital.
“It is obvious that the only way that the surgeons of BH can reduce their waiting lists is by having access to more operating room time to do the surgery,” stated the letter.
Blair said that – while the surgeons may have been right about being under-resourced – the health authority decided to open the extra OR because of data it has been building up for several years.
He called the disgruntled surgeons who wrote the letter last month a “small group.”
“Obviously they were ventilating,” Blair said, “but I continue, in my opinion, to have a good working relationship with the surgeons in Burnaby … I think it was a small group, and certainly the overwhelming impression I get as I travel around Fraser Health is that the surgeons understand the situation. The surgeons know that they need to work with us.”
Blair said two months with an extra operating room, should bring Burnaby’s wait times in line with other hospitals across the health region.
But Dr. David Jones, who spent six years as Burnaby Hospital’s medical director, said surgeons and patients won’t have enough time to make full use of the extra OR, and the health authority should be looking for a long-term solution to the hospital’s surgery problems.
“That’s very nice that (they) were able to find the resources to help for a short period of time,” Jones said, “but what’s the long-term solution to the waiting lists at Burnaby Hospital?”
Blair said some patients might not be able to take advantage of the extra operating room in the next two months, but he is confident the health authority will have no difficulty filling the extra time.
He added that Fraser Health might keep the seventh OR open after March but that managers have to look at the 2015/16 budget first.
“But it’s certainly been our impression that Burnaby will need extra capacity long term,” Blair said.
