Article content

The Alberta government intends to reduce wait times for surgeries by shifting some of the burden to private surgical facilities.

Health Minister Tyler Shandro announced Tuesday at the Southern Alberta Eye Centre in Calgary that the government will expand its partnership with non-hospital health-care clinics across the province to meet wait-time targets and provide 80,000 more publicly funded surgeries in the next four years.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Province turns to private sector for help reducing surgery wait times Back to video

By shifting non-life-threatening procedures, such as hip and knee replacements and cataract surgeries, to private clinics, hospitals can have more time and resources for emergency care and life-saving surgeries, Shandro said.

“In May of 2019, more than 70,000 Albertans were waiting for surgery and close to 40 per cent of them were waiting much longer than the clinically recommended wait times. That’s not good enough,” said Shandro.

The government already works with 42 non-hospital surgical facilities to provide about 15 per cent of the province’s publicly funded day surgeries, according to the minister. As more procedures are done at private clinics, medically necessary surgeries will remain on the government’s bill, paid for under medicare.