NSHA outlines plan to complete postponed surgeries

Nova Scotia Health Authority’s plan to complete surgeries that were postponed due to sterilizer malfunction at the QEII Health Sciences Centre will see most of the surgeries completed at the QEII, and the bulk of them completed this summer.

Senior surgeons and administrators developed the plan with a focus on providing postponed surgeries quickly, safely, and with minimal impact on patients in the health care system.

The plan includes the following elements to increase surgical capacity, enabling NSHA surgeons to complete postponed surgeries without increasing the overall waitlist:

• Add additional operating room time at the QEII over the summer months as staffing and physician resources permit.
• Use operating room time for day surgery patients at other NSHA facilities that are in close proximity to the QEII.
• Use additional operating room time at external partner facilities where possible.
• Realign available operating room time internally to ensure postponed patients and urgent patients are given priority (ex. when a physician has to cancel surgeries due to personal reasons such as illness, that operating time may be reallocated to provide the surgery to a patient who was postponed.)
• As always continue to prioritize patients based on urgency.

In total, 563 patients’ surgeries were postponed from April 20 to May 5. Physician offices have already rescheduled or completed 175 of these cases. Most are to be completed before the end of May.