Provinces Catch Up on Cancelled Surgeries, but Long Waits Persist

A health-care worker at a COVID-19 unit that used to be an orthopedic surgery unit at the Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg on Dec. 8, 2020. The Canadian Press/Mikaela MacKenzie

Many surgeries cancelled by lockdowns last spring have since taken place, but experts say even the best-performing provinces still struggle with chronically long wait times.

In British Columbia, about 30,000 procedures were cancelled or never scheduled during the two-month shutdown last spring. The province recently reported that as of Nov. 12, 2020, surgeries had been completed for 90 percent of patients whose operations had been postponed. Although a wait list of 88,401 still remained, it was 4 percent less than the same period in 2019.