Sask. boasts record surgery numbers, but Opposition says province still behind

The Saskatchewan government is touting another record-breaking year of surgeries, but the Opposition NDP says the province is still lagging behind the rest of the country.

According to the Health Minister Everett Hindley, more than 95,000 surgeries were performed from April 2023 to March 2024. That's about 6,000 more than the previous year.

Hindley said the surgery waitlist is down by 14 per cent, with4,600 fewer patients waiting for surgery than there were on March 31, 2023, and the number of people waiting longer than18 months reduced by 67 per cent.

"We still have some work to do,"Hindley said at a news conference Tuesday.

"We're not saying that there aren't still people on the waitlist, waiting for cataract surgery or hip or knee replacements, for example. We are making significant progress. This continues to be a priority for us."

Hindley said the province has an aggressive target of 100,000 surgeries for this year.

Provincial head of surgeryDr. Michael Kelly said the target will help drive the system forward.

"We want to offer the right person the right surgery at the right time, because surgery has a lot of different prioritization, and we want to make sure we're offering elective surgery to people that need it, but also a very emergent surgery when we need to," he said.

Meanwhile, the Opposition NDP criticized the state of surgery in Saskatchewan.

"It's clear the province could be performing more surgeries if they weren't sending patients to Calgary," health critic Vicki Mowat said in a statement.

She pointed to the government estimating a year ago that 250 hip and knee surgeries would be performed in Alberta over 12 months.Only 90 were done, so the contract has been extended six months to use up the credit balance.

She also referenced data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information that shows Saskatchewan has the longestaverage wait times for procedures like knee and hip replacements.

The median wait time for a knee surgery in Saskatchewan was 318 days in 2023 compared to the national average of 161.For hip surgery, the median wait time was 232 days in Saskatchewan, compared to 131 days nationally.

Later on Tuesday, the two parties tradedcomments about health careduring question period.

Premier Scott Moe touted the high number of surgeries Hindley had spoken aboutearlier in the day.

Moe ended his comments by alleging surgical wait times were the worstwhen theNDP formed government.

Mowat focused her comments on the present.

"Mr. Speaker, let's be crystal clear about this, that government has the worst wait times in Canada right now," said Mowat, referencing the median wait times for hip and knee replacements.

She also brought up concerns about transparency around out-of-province surgeries.

Mowat outlined how the NDP requested thecontracts between the province and the Alberta-based surgical company performing some procedures on Saskatchewan people. The government provided the documents, but some of the information specifically details like extra fees and procedure costs was redacted.

"This is basic information about public dollars that the Sask. Party shouldn't be afraid of releasing," Mowat said.