NDP shuts down Manitoba surgical and diagnostic task force that health minister says was inefficient
Mobile MRI service to be made available in northern region of province, Uzoma Asagwara says
A month after hitting pause on Manitoba's surgical and diagnostic task force, the NDP government is shutting it down permanently, saying it will redirect the focus and funding back into public health-care delivery.
Patients already scheduled to leave the province for care under the task force's direction, and those in the queue, will not see any added delays as the task force's operations wind down, Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said Friday at a news conference at Grace Hospital in Winnipeg.
"No one will be left behind. We want Manitobans to know that while we are dissolving the [task force], we will be working more directly with health-care leaders across the province to ensure continued innovation and investment in capacity here in Manitoba," Asagwara said.
The diagnostic and surgical recovery task force — a team of health-care professionals and other experts — was created in December 2021, under the previous Progressive Conservative government.
It was tasked with cutting the backlog of tens of thousands of surgeries, tests and diagnostic procedures made worse during the COVID-19 pandemic.
While the task force eliminated some wait lists, it was chastised for sending some patients out of province as it built up capacity in the public health-care system. The NDP regularly accused the task force of prioritizing private health-care over the public system.
As of March 2023, the province had committed $240 million to support initiatives implemented through the task force, the government's website says.
Shared Health, the organization that oversees health-care delivery in the province, will assume management of the task force structure and its contracts as it is dismantled.
The savings will be directed into three new projects to develop long-term capacity for surgical needs and address diagnostic wait times, said Asagwara, who did not indicate how much the province expects to save by dismantling the task force.
The new projects are:
- A mobile MRI service will be placed in the Northern Health Region.
- Surgical slates will be expanded at Grace Hospital.
- Spinal surgery programs will be expanded in Winnipeg at Concordia Hospital and Health Sciences Centre, and in Brandon at the regional health centre.
"Our government's focus will be on building the solutions in the public system in Manitoba, not buying capacity in other provinces or even in other countries," Asagwara said.
PC health critic Kathleen Cook blasted the NDP's move.
"I think it's irresponsible to abandon the work of the task force before we have the capacity here in Manitoba to meet patient needs," she said, adding the NDP's promises "all sound great" but will take time and resources and staff.
"I think what was completely lacking in today's announcement was a plan to get those staff into place. There are patients waiting for care today."
More than 700 surgeries have been done out of province, Shared Health said Friday.
Kim Kurylo was one of those people to go under the knife outside of Manitoba. She went to Cleveland, Ohio, in 2022 to get the hip surgery she'd been waiting for since 2019.
After hearing the task force will be dissolved, she worries about what might happen to people who endure long-term pain while waiting for their procedures.
"By leaving people on the list longer your health actually deteriorates," she said. "Not just your knee and your hip, you end up having mobility issues, having back pain, having shoulder issues, neck [pain], all kinds of things I got waiting for so long to fix my hip."
She said she's "very interested" to see what happens in the future.
No MRIs in north
There are 13 MRIs in the province, but none in the northern region, Asagwara said. It will still likely be a year before a northern mobile MRI unit is in place, they said.
"This will bring diagnostic services closer to home for many in the north who were faced with long waits and very complicated, at times, travel plans."
As for spinal surgeries, the wait times have been among the longest of all procedures in the province, Asagwara said.
"Many people live in pain for years, waiting for their surgeries," they said.
A spinal surgery program will be established at Concordia Hospital while equipment will be upgraded in Brandon to allow for "minimally invasive spine surgeries to finally be done in that part of the province," Asagwara said.
Once the spinal capacity has been fully increased, the current backlog of about 3,000 patients will be eliminated within a year, Asagwara said.
The province will save $7.5 million annually by performing those surgeries in Manitoba, Asagwara said.
At Health Sciences Centre, the province plans to expand capacity at the rapid access surgery clinic.
The Grace Hospital updates include increases in the number of surgeries for arthroplasty and urology and five more surgical beds "to fully utilize the capacity that exists at the Grace Hospital — [and] has existed, quite frankly, for years but has been very under utilized," Asagwara said, estimating an additional 1,000 orthopedic surgeries annually.
That's a change in approach after years of cuts and under-investment in the health-care system, Asagwara said.
"This is going to improve access for all Manitobans, here in Manitoba — not in North Dakota, not in British Columbia, not in Florida, not in Minnesota and no, not in San Francisco," they said.
The changes won't immediately repair the damage done but will begin to build capacity in the short and medium term, the health minister said.
Task force criticized
The task force spent millions of dollars sending people elsewhere for procedures at the expense of further expanding surgical and diagnostic capacity, Asagwara said.
Some of those visits to private clinics cost up to seven times more than if the procedure had been done in Manitoba, according to the health minister.
Asagwara said the province's health authorities felt disconnected from the task force and "[its] projects were sometimes described as disruptive or inefficient in terms of co-ordination throughout the system … and incredibly costly," Asagwara said.
The government will review some of the project proposals submitted to the task force, and some could still be implemented, the health minister said.
Cook, the health critic, said the PC government was moving toward expanding capacity in Manitoba but did what it had to in order to address immediate needs.
"The role of government and leaders is to come up with innovative solutions that meet the needs of patients today, and if that meant sending patients out of province for surgery — by choice, nobody was forced to go … I think it's incumbent on government to do whatever it takes to get people the care they need as quickly as possible," she said.
But Thomas Linner, provincial director of the Manitoba Health Coalition, applauded Asagwara's announcement.
"We have been concerned, from its inception, that the task force was set up by the previous government to put private profit over public health-care solutions," he said in an emailed statement.
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With files from Ian Froese