A Freedom of Information request to the Saskatchewan Ministry of Health has revealed that 385 patients died while waiting for surgery during the 2023-24 period.
This figure represents a slight decrease of 17 deaths compared to the previous year, but SecondStreet.org’s communication director, Dom Lucyk, says it underscores deeper issues within the healthcare system that need urgent attention.
“The idea of spending the last few years of your life in pain, not being able to walk to your grandkid’s hockey practice or to go bake for the church fundraising bake sale because you have a hip surgery that the government can’t provide you. That’s just wrong,” Lucyk said.
Lucyk attributed long surgical wait times to the government’s monopoly on healthcare delivery. He argued for introducing private options to alleviate the strain on public operating rooms.
“If you’re paying for private surgery, you’re going to get your procedure done more quickly; every time you do that, everyone else behind you on the wait list moves up a spot, right? So it takes pressure off of the system, and they’ve managed to make it work pretty much everywhere except Canada,” he said.
Countries like Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland have successfully integrated for-profit hospitals and insurers into their universal healthcare systems. Lucyk pointed out that while Canada restricts private healthcare providers through laws and regulations, these models demonstrate the potential for such systems to coexist with universal care.
“The idea is that the government has to be the sole deliverer of healthcare and that the best way to solve problems in healthcare is to throw more money at the system. It’s just wrong,” he said.
Lucyk highlighted a recent example of Saskatchewan employing private services to address backlogs. In 2023, the province signed a $6-million contract with Canadian Surgical Solutions, a private clinic in Calgary, to perform hip and knee surgeries for patients impacted by COVID-19-related delays.
“I’m glad to see things starting to move in the other direction in Saskatchewan, but there’s still a lot of work ahead. There are many, many changes that the province could make that would help patients get care more quickly, and that would lead to numbers like this being a heck of a lot lower,” he said.
Among the potential reforms, Lucyk suggested introducing cross-border healthcare arrangements to allow patients to access surgeries in nearby countries. He cited the Quebec Health Insurance Board’s practice of reimbursing part of healthcare costs for out-of-country treatments, which could serve as a model for Saskatchewan.
“Let’s say that someone in Estevan has a bad hip. If this policy were copied, they could drive down to North Dakota, get the surgery, pay for it, and then come home. The Saskatchewan government would pay them up to what it would have cost to get it done at home, and then they (the patients) would cover anything extra,” Lucyk explained.
Looking ahead, Lucyk hopes for systemic reforms in healthcare, both in Saskatchewan and across Canada. He believes bold changes could significantly improve access, timeliness, and quality of care while reducing preventable deaths.
“If the current government were to make some bold changes, they could serve as an example for the rest of the country. We could get people the care they deserve more quickly, and we could fix the broken system,” he said.