By Angela Hill

Victoria hospital to see more money for surgeries

Feb 14, 2011 | 10:58 AM

A provincial funding announcement is set to have positive results for the Prince Albert Parkland Health Region.

The government announced the provision of $40 million in additional funding for the Saskatchewan Surgical Initiative.

The funds will mean new equipment for the soon-to-be-opened, fourth operating room at Victoria Hospital.

“We’re very grateful that we can move forward with the fourth operating room. (It’s been) a long time coming,” said Carol Gregoryk, vice-president of integrated health services

“We’ve been working on what we would need here, to meet our surgical targets for about three months now. We knew there would be some funding, we just weren’t clear on how much, so it’s a great amount of dollars for meeting surgical targets.”

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Gregoryk hopes that some of the money is also earmarked for the staff required to run the new operating room at full capacity.

She’ll learn if that funding is coming, as well as the specifics for the funds for the equipment, later this week.

According the government’s release, the funds will enable heath regions to complete and additional 5,550 surgeries next year.

The $40 million is going towards hospital cost and physician services, quality improvement initiatives, surgical information system expansion, improved assessment of surgical patients and staff training.

There is also $4 million directed towards diagnostic imaging equipment including another new MRI for Saskatoon.

The final details are still being hammered out.

ahill@panow.com