Regina Qu’appelle Health Region offers surgical contract

The Regina Qu'appelle Health Region wants to cut patient wait lists and have more day surgeries done outside of its hospitals.

A request for proposals (RFP) has been posted to MERX, an online public tendering service, to find companies that would be interested in performing out-of-hospital ear, nose and throat, gynecology, orthopedics and dental procedures starting this fall and running until Dec. 31, 2013.

Trent Truscott, Executive Director of Surgical Care Services for the region, insists it is not privatization.

“What this is for us, and for our patients, is increased access, simply that,” he said.

While he couldn't give specifics on how long the wait lists for those procedures he did say they have an impact.

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“Those procedures could be moved out and would provide quite a bit of extra capacity within the health region itself in one of our acute care sites, either at the Pasqua or at the Regina General hospitals,” he said.

Truscott says the RFP process means that all of those procedures listed may not be a part of the final contract.

“We may decide when we get our proposals back that, in fact, we don't do all of those outside,” he said.

Omni Surgery Centre has been in contract with RQHR since August of last year to perform dental and knee surgeries. A total of 171 surgeries were performed there between September and December.

Omni's contract with the health region is slated to run out in March, but RQHR says in an effort to avoid a gap in service it intends to extend that until fall, when the new one begins.

The Saskatoon Health Region also wants more private surgeries done outside of its hospitals.

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