Ontario’s doctors push province to create non-profit surgical centres for backlog – CTV
Nov. 22, 2022
Ontario doctors pushed lawmakers this week to create specialized non-profit clinics to tackle a massive surgical backlog that worsened during the pandemic.
The Ontario Medical Association said it would like to see “integrated ambulatory centres” affiliated with hospitals across the province to deal with the backlog that has grown to more than one million procedures.
“The stand-alone series of surgical centres are designed specifically to focus on one type of surgery at a time so that we could improve efficiency, more patients would get their procedures done, and it would be an improved experience for the health-care delivery team,” the association’s president, Dr. Rose Zacharias, said in an interview.
The centres would focus on specific elective surgeries, such as replacing knees and hips, she said. They would operate within Ontario’s publicly funded health-care system and would not contribute to a two-tier system, the medical association said.
