If there is a simple solution to shorten wait lists for surgical procedures in Prince George and give surgeons more operating time, Michael McMillan would love to hear about it.
However, in an aging society that requires more medical care, including surgery, the challenge of finding that miracle cure becomes more difficult in a publicly-funded hospital limited by budget restraints and the number of trained specialists.
But that's not to say McMillan, the chief operating officer at Northern Health, and his staff are not looking for ways to improve the system.
"Northern Health continues to invest in expanded [surgical] capacity at UHNBC, said McMillan.
"Over the last number of years, and most recently two years ago, [there was] a significant expansion of orthopedic surgical time in effort to deal with hip and knee wait list issues and we are making progress on those issues.
"There are still challenges in all of our surgical specialties and we continue to work to expand that capacity as we can.
Wait lists are going up for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the aging of the population."
"We've increased operating time over the last number of years in Northern Health so wait lists should be going down, but that's being countered by an aging population so the demand is going up."
A report by the Fraser Institute issued last week found 67.9 per cent of the physicians surveyed cite lack of operating time as the reason for increasing wait lists for patients needing surgery. The other most common factors reported in the study were the doctors' patient case load (38.8 per cent) and lack of available hospital beds (29.5 per cent).
Last year's edition of Waiting Your Turn: Wait Times for Health Care in Canada determined the average wait time for patient appointments with specialists after being referred by a general practitioner was 18.2 weeks in 2010, up from 16.1 weeks in 2009.
That study also found Canadians waited 12 per cent longer for medical treatment in 2010 than they did in 2001.
Northern Health allocates funding for operating room procedures and McMillan is aware of the concerns of the city's ophthalmologists, who have stated they don't get enough surgical time. The local health authority is currently conducting an impact study on the potential to recruit new eye specialists, visiting other hospitals for comparison to see how they function.
The study group will also look at the possibility of moving some of eye procedures out of the operating rooms in Prince George to different areas of the hospital to expand availability.
"It's not just a matter of, if I had a room, moving cataract surgery into a room down the hall," McMillan said. "There's a whole infrastructure around this and we have to do this right. If you're having your eyes operated on, you want to know the infrastructure in place is very high quality. It's a matter of doing a carefully-planned process and we are definitely undertaking that.
"We need to make sure we're as efficient with our operating time as possible.
"Are we getting as many patients through in a day as we possibly can and we have to learn from the sites that are doing best at that?"
McMillan said Northern Health has been successful in recruiting anesthesiologists and surgical nurses, as well as providing surgical training to nurses already on staff. But money and the lack of trained specialists are still limiting factors. The budget at UHNBC allows for staffing of seven of the eight operating rooms in the hospital.
