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home / 世界杯决赛2022

windsor wait times for non-urgent surgeries are back to pre-pandemic levels

windsor regional hospital has whittled the waitlist for...

by trevor wilhelm

mar 4 2022
read time 2 minute read
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dr. wassim saad, chief of staff at windsor regional hospital, speaks during a news conference in this file photo from march 18, 2020. dax melmer / windsor star
windsor regional hospital has whittled the waitlist for non-urgent surgeries back down to pre-pandemic levels, but the organization’s chief of staff said that still means more than 5,200 people are waiting for procedures.
dr. wassim saad stressed that without strategies that included moving procedures out of the main operating rooms, and in many cases into community clinics, that wait list likely would be double.
“it’s obviously not great to have 5,000 people waiting for operations,” saad told board members during an update on the hospital’s ramp-up of procedures.
“but had we not implemented some of the measures you’re seeing on the screen, that number could easily be double and in the 10,000 range. we know other organizations who have had their wait lists double as a result of these directives.”
the hospital is trying to catch up with wait lists for surgeries and diagnostic imaging after the province announced in february it would gradually lift the pause on non-urgent procedures.
saad said the hospital is currently operating at about 70 per cent for surgeries and diagnostic imaging. it will likely move to 90 per cent within the next week or two.
in march 2020, there was a waitlist of about 5,300 non-urgent surgeries, which the hospital calls priority 4 procedures. this week, there were about 5,200 procedures on the waitlist.
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strategies that kept the number from escalating included moving foot surgery and same-day joint programs out of the main operating rooms, shifting cases from the ambulatory department into community clinics and moving the eye program off-site.
“a lot of this is born out of the pandemic,” saad said during thursday’s board meeting. “so if there are some positives we can look at from this pandemic, it’s forced us to be a little bit more creative with use of our operating time.”
the attempt to stabilize wait times for diagnostic imaging through the pandemic has been more difficult.
saad said the targeted wait time for mri and ct scans is 28 days. in march 2020, the hospital was fulfilling ct scan requests within 22 days. the wait for an mri was 149 days.
when the hospital emerged from the province’s first order to pause non-urgent procedures, saad said the wait for ct scans had “ballooned” to 92 days, and the mri wait time was 255 days.
by january 2022, he said ct wait times had dropped to 44 days and the wait for an mri had inched down to 184 days.
but the numbers have spiked again, with the current priority 4 wait times as high as 81 days for a ct scan and 206 days for an mri.
saad said windsor regional hospital has three ct scanners, which all run 24 hours a day, seven days week.
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the hospital has two mri machines, but it has applied to the province for approval to acquire a third one. the two current mri machines run 18 hours a day monday to friday and 16 hours a day on the weekends.
“if we had the human health resources to be able to run it more hours, we could,” said saad.
twilhelm@postmedia.com
trevor wilhelm
trevor wilhelm

trevor wilhelm is an award-winning multimedia journalist. he has been a reporter for more than two decades, living and working in locales ranging from winnipeg to hong kong. wilhelm has been a member of the windsor star team, chronicling the triumphs and tragedies of his adopted hometown, since 2006. his coverage has ranged from the police beat to provincial politics. for the last several years, he has focused on lengthier investigations, freedom of information probes, and in-depth feature writing. his work has highlighted social issues, exposed hidden information, and changed government policy.

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