Health officials head to England to learn how to reduce surgical wait times

paNOW Staff

November will be a busy month for health region officials.
Representatives from the Prince Albert Parkland Health Region are traveling to learn more strategies to reduce surgical wait times.
“Our goal of going there is to improve outcomes for surgical patients in Saskatchewan. We want to look and see what they are doing there and what we can improve here,” said Sharon Griffin, director of acute care services.
Griffin is one of four from the health region joining the Minister of Health on a trip to London, England to tour health facilities and learn more about the system.
During an earlier trip to the country, releasing time to care, a multistep program to streamlining ward procedures was picked up.
On this trip they are looking closely at surgical wait times in particular.
“Basically along the same lines in the productive (operating room) and we are looking at seeing if this is something we can also do here as well because we’ve had success as releasing time to care,” said Carol Gregoryk, vice-president of integrated health services.
“We are attempting to meet surgical targets from the Ministry, so any partnerships we can do with the ministry to work on where we are at right now, is an opportunity for us.”
Gregoryk is traveling to the Fraser Health Authority in British Columbia to look at their surigical wait-time strategies.
“They have a way to predict, based on their potential surgeries how many beds they are going to need at any given time, and then they can predict out and to the future based on what’s booked in the surgery,” she said.
“(They’ll know) how many beds they’ll need so they can adjust what’s booked in the operating room accordingly.”
The information collected will be used to decide on procedures for reducing surgical wait times for the province.

ahill@panow.com