The provincial government will provide Northern Health up to $3.7 million in extra funding to perform additional surgeries and reduce wait lists in specific areas over the coming year.
A portion of the money will be used to perform 360 additional hip and knee joint replacements and 807 more magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) procedures.
Last year, 513 hip and knee replacements and 3,750 MRIs were carried out in Northern Health facilities, which means the additional funding paves the way for respective increases of 70 and 22 per cent in those surgeries.
The goal is to bring the wait times down to less than 26 weeks for most hip and knee replacements and less than two months for an MRI.
The extra cash was also to go towards 1,250 more colonoscopies but that could change, said Northern Health chief operating officer Michael McMillan, because the wait list for that procedure was dramatically reduced after the application for additional funding was submitted.
"We're going to try to shift the money to something else that we have a wait list in," he said.
Prince George-Valemount MLA Shirley Bond said the money is coming through a "patient-focused" model in which the money is provided after the procedures are completed.
"This is the first allocation of a larger budget," she said. "Across the province, there will be additional dollars coming in the years that lie ahead but it is about reducing wait times for patients.
"British Columbia does have excellent outcomes in many of the wait list areas. As a former health minister I know that this is a significant priority."
