The Year-End Progress Report on B.C.’s Surgical Renewal Commitment to patients clearly demonstrates ongoing innovation delivering the most surgeries ever recorded in the province in a year.

“This new milestone of 350,000 surgeries this year is on top of the over 337,000 surgeries we delivered in 2021-22, itself a record. We have not only delivered on our commitment to complete the postponed surgeries, but we have delivered more surgeries overall than we did prior to surgical renewal,” said Adrian Dix, Minister of Health. “Taking action to find new methods, approaches and facilities works. Individual and collective action works. These are critical to surgical renewal, and simply put, surgical renewal works.”

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, non-urgent scheduled surgeries were postponed on March 16, 2020, resuming on May 18, 2020. Since then, further surgical postponements were caused by subsequent waves of COVID-19, extreme weather, and human resources challenges.

As of March 31, 2023:

• 99.9% of the 14,781 patients whose scheduled surgery was postponed during the first wave and still wished to pursue a surgical treatment have had their surgery;
• 99.7% of the 3,153 patients whose scheduled surgery was postponed because of the second and third waves and still wished to pursue a surgical treatment have had their surgery; and,
• 99.7% of the 6,567 patients whose scheduled surgery was postponed because of waves four and five and still wished to pursue a surgical treatment have had their surgery.

2022-23 year-end surgical renewal achievements include the following:

• Delivery of 350,886 scheduled and unscheduled surgeries – 14,709 surgeries, or 4% more compared to the same timeframe in 2019-20.
• Delivery of 33,473 urgent scheduled surgeries within four weeks – a 9% increase compared to the same timeframe in 2019-20.
• Delivery of 30,330 non-urgent surgeries for patients waiting longer than two times their target wait – 10% more compared to the same timeframe in 2019-20.
• Expansion of operating room hours by 31,219 to 613,534 hours – 5% higher compared to the same timeframe in 2019-20.
• Reduction by 4.9% of the total waitlist size compared to the same timeframe in 2019-20.
• Addition of 41 new initiatives in health authorities to increase operating room time and capacity since April 1, 2022.
• Completion of training by health authorities of an additional 344 surgical specialty nurses, bringing the total trained to 962 throughout B.C. since April 2020.
• Addition of net-new health-care staff to surgical services throughout B.C, including 209 surgeons, 134 anesthesiologists, 322 perioperative nurses, seven general physician anesthetists, and 76 medical device reprocessing technicians since April 2020.

“Whether it was us following guidance to slow the spread, or getting our vaccinations, or patients and their loved ones preparing for surgery and for the recovery from it, or all those of us involved in delivering surgeries to patients, and providing care to them after their surgery, it is our individual and collective actions that always make the difference that matters most,” Dix said.

“By increasing our province’s surgical performance we are reducing wait times and increasing access to much needed surgeries. This means improving people’s quality of life, getting people back to their daily routines more quickly, and helping people get the surgical care they need.”

B.C.’s Surgical Renewal Commitment to patients is to deliver surgeries that were postponed or not scheduled due to COVID-19, to deliver surgeries fastest to those who need them most, and to change the way surgeries are delivered in B.C. And that work continues in 2023-24.

Learn More:

To view A Commitment to Surgical Renewal in B.C., visit: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/health/conducting-health-research/surgical-renewal-plan.pdf

To view the Year-End Progress Report on B.C.’s Surgical Renewal Commitment, visit: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/health/conducting-health-research/surgical_renewal_year-end_progress_report_april_2022-march_2023.pdf