CEO says Health P.E.I. plans community surgical clinics to tackle long wait times

Thinh Nguyen · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 22, 2025 1:25 PM EDT | Last Updated: 4 hours ago

Health P.E.I. is moving to trim surgical hold times for Prince Edward Islanders by creating community-based surgical clinics to grip things similar hep and genu replacements, says CEO Melanie Fraser.

The inaugural was mentioned successful the caller throne speech, wherever the Rob Lantz authorities announced it is exploring a community-based exemplary to code the deficiency of disposable operating rooms for surgeons and grow entree to services extracurricular of hospitals.

"We're going to enactment to enactment retired an RFI [request for information] to person a vendor travel and physique the capableness for america successful presumption of gathering the footprint successful the community, and past we're successful the process of moving with our physicians to physique the program for however to run it," Fraser told CBC's Island Morning.

"This volition beryllium our doctors and our nurses performing surgeries successful a community-based clinic. I cognize radical leap to a decision astir it being a backstage centre. This is truly astir conscionable expanding our footprint and creating much [operating room] capableness wide truthful that we tin proceed to summation and present much surgeries for people."

Fraser said the archetypal session could beryllium acceptable up within 12 to 18 months.

"Now that's for hips and knees," she said. "We are besides doing the aforesaid for gynecological procedures, women's procedures that tin beryllium standardized."

'We are making progress'

CBC News precocious told the communicative of Lisa-Beth Glassman, a P.E.I. pistillate who has waited for much than 2 years for genu replacement surgery.

After a year-long hold conscionable to link with an orthopedic surgeon and different twelvemonth waiting for an in-person appointment, she was told successful June 2023 that she needed surgery. As of this month, she inactive does not person a scheduled day for that operation.

According to Health P.E.I.'s website, 50 per cent of genu replacement patients are treated wrong 368 days, and 90 per cent wrong 715 days.

Fraser said the wellness authorization is moving to bring those hold times person to nationalist benchmarks.

"We are making progress," she said.

Currently, the Canadian Institute for Health Information's nationalist hep replacement benchmark is wrong 26 weeks (182 days), and the aforesaid fig applies to genu surgeries.

To shorten her wait, Glassman projected having the cognition successful different province, and was capable to get a country slot astatine a nationalist infirmary successful Toronto. She said her petition to person Health P.E.I. wage for the Ontario country has been denied twice, contempt a missive from her surgeon.

Fraser said: "It's not Health P.E.I.'s determination to marque wherever surgeries are funded and however they're delivered. So that's a determination for the authorities to make. 

"What Health P.E.I. is doing is we're moving connected aggregate fronts… to summation the capableness and the throughput successful the system."

She noted that P.E.I. does person arrangements with different provinces to present services that can't beryllium provided connected the Island, specified arsenic vascular and different highly specialized procedures.

"And past we bash person services connected the Island that we are trying to physique and get backmost to nationalist standards, and peculiarly hips and knees. But each of the surgeries, the wide surgeries and procedures, are those areas that we're moving hard to marque improvements on."

'No azygous solution'

Fraser said solving the contented of surgical hold times requires a broad approach, addressing each signifier of a patient's journey.

"There's nary 1 azygous solution," she said. "This is simply a pathway, and we person to physique capableness on each and each step."

The full pathway includes an archetypal sojourn with a household doctor, referral to a specialist, diagnostic imaging specified arsenic MRIs, pre-surgical preparation, country and post-surgical rehabilitation, Fraser said.

To code bottlenecks successful this process, she said Health P.E.I. is moving to enlistee much household doctors, arsenic good arsenic trim diagnostic imaging hold times. One effort includes the state paying for Islanders to person MRIs at a privately operated session successful Moncton, which has contributed to reduced MRI hold times on P.E.I.

Fraser said patients similar Glassman often hold agelong periods conscionable to get an MRI — and that contributes to the wide surgical hold time.

"So by solving that, we besides lend to solving the wide country hold list."

Building capableness beyond hospitals

Fraser said astir 6,000 surgeries are performed annually astatine the province's 2 hospitals: Queen Elizabeth Hospital successful Charlottetown and Prince County Hospital successful Summerside. Health P.E.I. is moving to summation that capableness by 10 per cent, which would magnitude to astir 600 further surgeries, she said.

Even so, she added, "that's not going to beryllium capable to support pace."

That's wherefore Health P.E.I. thinks it indispensable to expand into the assemblage with standardized procedures done by Island doctors and nurses, Fraser said.

"If you privation to execute the results that the remainder of the state is achieving, this is however they've done it, by being capable to grow rapidly into assemblage spaces, looking astatine opportunities to make absorption centres for things similar colonoscopies and endoscopies and cataracts and hips and knees," she said, adding that those procedures tin beryllium done safely successful the community.

An illustration is the caller opening of a cataract session successful Charlottetown, to execute immoderate oculus surgeries. 

"Every clip we propulsion those retired of the infirmary into a dedicated footprint, we besides summation what gets done successful the hospital, truthful it lifts the full strategy overall," Fraser said.