Health Minister’s comments on backlog of surgeries being wiped are ‘misleading’: RIH surgeon
KAMLOOPS — A general surgeon at Royal Inland Hospital (RIH) says Health Minister Adrian Dix’s comments regarding the backlog of surgeries from the COVID-19 and weather events being wiped are misleading.
Going through RIH’s numbers, Dr. Sean Gorman says they’re down about 1,000 surgeries compared to their pre-pandemic volume, and about 700 from the last fiscal year, but the types of surgeries are different.
“The kinds of cases that have been done are short snappers, as opposed to things that are complicated, like having a joint replaced or having your abdominal wall reconstructed,” Gorman says. “Anybody that needed to stay in hospital for more than a few minutes to a couple hours after their operation weren’t being offered operations. That amounts to a huge volume of patients.”
According to Gorman, emergency room cases are down from 3,543 in 2018-19 to 3,136 in 2021-22, due to fewer people travelling during the pandemic. Additionally, RIH is down from 6,416 cases in 2018-19 to 5,183 in 2021-22. However, cases in the Kamloops Surgical Centre is up from 2,821 in 2018-19 to 3,272 in 2021-22.