Thousands of elective surgery dates in B.C. to be rescheduled soon, says health minister
Posted April 29, 2020 7:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — A new date should be coming soon for the thousands of people waiting for their elective surgeries to be rescheduled, says the provincial health minister.
Work is being done as everyone waits for some COVID-19 restrictions, including rescheduling more than 16,000 operations cancelled to make more hospital beds available.
Health Minister Adrian Dix says people may not have to wait much longer.
“You’ll be expecting to see a plan soon and that will address all those issues including issues around priority. It’s a full assessment of our capacity, the need to plan over a period of months including into the Fall, and the inevitable arrival of the influenza season at the very least.”
He says nearly 15,000 urgent procedures have gone ahead over the last month, however, “We would expect by the third week in May, it will be between 28,000and 30,000 scheduled surgeries that would have occurred and that did not occur because of the cancellation of elective surgeries.”
Dix says a team is now assessing how much capacity is available heading into the Fall when the virus could reappear.
