‘It’s early days’: Doctors Manitoba says reducing surgical wait-list will be uphill battle

An organization representing Manitoba physicians says it’s troubling to see statistics showing the province having the second-largest surgical wait-list in Canada.

Those findings are part of a new report from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), which says the current wait-list in Manitoba is 40,000 people long.

Doctors Manitoba president Randy Guzman said Thursday that while the province has introduced a new online booking system aimed at tracking and prioritizing patients, it’s still too early to see that make an impact on the lengthy list.

“I think we’re still collecting the early data on types of procedures for all the different specialties and their wait-list times and all of that,” Guzman said.

“I think it is a significant advance in terms of collection of the data, but it’s still early days.”

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According to the CIHI report, it would take as long as five months to complete all of the surgeries on Manitoba’s wait-list, and that doesn’t include any new cases that will come in over that time frame.

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Guzman said Manitoba is making progress with the new surgical booking system, but the reason the province has fallen behind is due primarily to a lack of physicians.

“We are the lowest number of family (doctors), we are the third-lowest number of specialists across the country … those numbers would translate to longer wait-lists and lower volumes, certainly — and the ability to rebound.

“Manitoba, although we are recovering, it’s been a little bit slower, and we still have some work to do.”

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