More Prince Albert dental surgeries to keep patients closer to home

“Prince Albert Parkland also has the ability to do more surgery.”

This news is good for the Prince Albert Parkland Health Region (PAPHR), said communications officer Doug Dahl.

“It’s really important for us to try to keep people closer to home, you know, as much as it is us looking to maximize the use of our operating room capacity the important part for this is keeping people closer to home,” Dahl said.

For those traveling to Saskatoon for surgery, it does present challenges, he added.

“Particularly if it’s for children it can be very disruptive and we know that if we can get it done and make it available for people to have the surgery done in Prince Albert that it’s better for them as well. ”

The region is currently preparing for the influx of patients, which will take place over the next 12 to 15 months.

“The issue for us is that for us we’ve traditionally done about 20 per cent of surgeries of people from our region for dental surgery… in Prince Albert and the rest went elsewhere and the bulk of that was to Saskatoon,” Dahl explained. “So what we have begun in the process of talking with the dentists here and trying to havr a much more co-ordinated approach on how we can make sure services are available.”

There are still preparations to be made with the ministry, including attaining equipment to meet the demand. According to Dahl, the increase of dental surgeries will be “fairly significant.”

“But that will need some support and work with the dentists, both the dentists that do dental surgery as well as the dentists that don’t do it, and what they’re referral patterns are,” he said, adding all these surgeries will be done at the Victoria Hospital.

PAPHR on-target for provincial wait-time goal

The new availability at the hospital is a sign of the times for the PAPHR.

“At one time patients were being referred out of region because we had longer waiting list, we had inconsistent care providers. We’ve done a lot of work to build up the base of specialists including surgeons and anesthetists or in this case dentists working to try and have as many of them available and do as much as we can here,” Dahl said.

Blackmore said the PAPHR indicated it could handle more patients, meaning it won’t create longer wait times.

Dahl said the PAPHR is on track to meet the provincial goal of having all surgeries performed within three months—a goal not every health region will meet.

On Wednesday the Saskatoon Health Region announced it won’t be able to reach this goal.

And it’s not just dental surgeries that will be increasing at the Victoria Hospital.

Dahl said with the region’s surgery wait-times coming under control, they are encouraging patients who need a variety of procedures to look into getting it performed at the Victoria Hospital.

“If somebody is talking to their family physician about something they might need surgery for, or their other family care providers if you’re going to need surgery, there’s a lot that can be done here and we would like to help save people those travel and the inconvenience of going out of town for surgery.”

sstone@panow.com

On Twitter: @sarahstone84

by Sarah Stone

More Prince Albert dental surgeries to keep patients closer to home

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