Thread by @daniellelorenz

As someone who has had major surgery surgery during the PC, NDP, and UCP governments, let me tell you a little bit about what I know about surgical wait times. And how wrong the UCP are (quelle surprise) #ableg #abpoli

As a patient, your need for surgery is determined by (a) the severity of your concern and (b) the queue ahead of you.

Severity means how poor your quality of life is based on the wait.

If you need an ortho surgery but you can manage by taking OTC Tylenol you’re doing pretty okay. If you need opioids, you are not.

Let me be clear here: all pain sucks. But your doctor knows you and your case and how urgent your need for surgery is.

The other things that contribute to surgical wait times are (a) surgeon availability, and (b) OR availability.

There are a finite number of spaces available for emergency, urgent, and “elective” surgeries in hospitals.

Emergency = needed or death will occur.

Urgent = medically-necessary, with poor quality of life occurring

“Elective” = not medically necessary but desired.

In AB as well as the rest of Canada, there are regulations on how many hours a surgeon can work and the hours they can work.

I am sure these regulations are why medical malpractice is much lower here than the US.

You don’t want an exhausted surgeon.

As it has been explained to me, a surgeon will have X amount of spots for medically necessary surgeries, and Y spots for less urgent surgeries on a given day they are in the OR.

My guess is X is bigger than Y; they try to get through more urgent needs faster.

An OR availability schedule comes out roughly a month in advance.

It is currently August. Doctors are arranging the surgeries they will be performing in September about now.

Well, technically, “doctors.”

Surgeons aren’t organizing their schedules - that is handled by other medical staff.

Of the four surgeries I had between December 2013 and April 2019 the wait time was between 3 and 6 months.

3 were in the medically necessary realm and the other was in the elective realm.

I just realized I made a mistake - my last surgery was two days after the 2019 election, so that doesn’t count.

But my next one will probably be before the next election.

2013 surgery: 5 month wait because a part was recalled by Health Canada. It would have been 3-4 months had that not occurred. This was an urgent surgery because my pain levels were high (7-8) and I needed opioids to “function.”

2014: 3 month wait, again urgent b/c lots of pain.

2016: 3 month wait. “Elective-ish.” Pain not as bad but hardware was causing issues regularly.

2019: 6 month wait. Not as medically necessary as 2013 and 2014.

Surgeon also went on vacation for a few weeks and had a bigger practice than they did in 2013.

Surgery TBA: will probably be about 6mo wait. I’m better at knowing what my body feels like as things go downhill.

My wait time will be related to my doctor’s availability, OR availability, how poorly I’m doing, and all of my surgeon’s other patients and how they’re doing.

When I was little (3 or 5) one of my surgeries got pushed back ~6h because of an emergency. This was at Sick Kid’s

In 2011 (in ON) my doctor was able to squeeze me into a cancelation so I had surgery 3 days later. It was less urgent than the 2013 and 2014 surgeries.

This is all to say that determining wait time for surgery depends on a number of variables.

Two of these variables are contingent on provincial funding: OR availability (enough ORs in enough hospitals to meet need) and doctor availability.

If there aren’t enough doctors and enough ORs for them to perform surgeries wait times go up.

Provincial gov’ts control funding for hospitals.

The other thing that is conveniently being forgotten in the UCP’s wait time narrative is that the population of older Albertans that need surgery—particularly on knees and hips—is greater than it has ever been before.

#ableg #abpoli

How many Albertans are 65+ now compared to 1990?

What is the change in percentage population?

These demographic variables are important too.

So yeah, wait times will go up if the healthcare infrastructure hasn’t changed to support an aging population.

Again, this is to say that waiting sucks.

It really sucks to have to wait for surgery.

It sucks even more when you’re waiting while in pain.

It really, really sucks to wait while going through the motions of “living.”

Boomers, now that you’re getting up there in age and starting to have more health concerns, I hope you realize that no healthcare issues will improve unless the government invests in it (and elder care).

Let me be clear: whatever retirement savings you have will start circling the drain if AB goes back to for-profit/two-tiered healthcare.

And your access to care is going to get a hell of a lot worse.

Make no mistake, the UCP are going to increase surgical wait times for most Albertans.

If you think it’s bad now, you don’t know what’s coming.