Private clinics used to clear surgery backlog

By Dan Hilborn
Published Sept. 15, 2004


The Fraser Health Authority used the services of four different private eye clinics this spring to help reduce a severe backlog in cataract surgeries, health authority spokesperson Don Bower confirmed recently.

"I know that we did have some cataract work done in clinics back at a time when we had a significant backlog," Bower said in a recent interview, after Global television reported that the Ministry of Health Services had changed its policies to allow funding of procedures at private clinics.

About 300 eye surgeries were performed at the private clinics, Bower said. The private clinic surgeries represented just a small portion of the total 6,000-plus eye surgeries performed around the region annually, he added.

Bower also said that the use of the private eye clinics in March of this year was not related to the closure of the eye clinic at Saint Mary's Hospital in New Westminster in late February.

"I can't argue when March was, but the fact is that we did this because of the wait lists," he said. "We provided this service in Abbotsford, Surrey, Langley and New Westminster, and that says to me that we were meeting wait-list pressures across Fraser Health."

Bower noted that funding of surgeries at private clinics is legal under the Canada Health Act, which prohibits private individuals from paying for their own health services. He also noted that the doctors who work at the private clinics in question also all work with the health authority.

Bower also denied that the use of private clinics was a change in either policy or direction for the local health authority.

"I don't see it as a change in direction at all," he said. "What it is is using available operating rooms.

"So what you're really doing is going outside your own building to get more operating capacity to do more procedures that are fully funded by the Medical Services Plan. That's the easiest way to look at it - that we're effectively renting operating room capacity and it's all to bring down the wait lists."

"I think this is an attempt to shorten wait lists, and that's a positive thing," he said. "I think it's an attempt to be responsible, and shorten wait lists."

And the Fraser Health Authority is not the only B.C. health authority to admit to using private clinics in the past year.

Officials with the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority also confirmed this week that they paid for surgeries at private clinics in an attempt to reduce the surgical waiting list backlog created by the one-week Hospital Employees' Union job action earlier this spring.