There were about 95,700 surgeries performed in the last fiscal year in Saskatchewan, which is almost 6,000 more than the previous record set in 2022-23. That’s according to report from the province on surgical performance and wait times, which also indicates that the number of people waiting more than a year is down by almost 33 per cent. Those waiting more than six months is down by almost 25 per cent and more than three months by almost 16 per cent. This is the wait time between seeing a specialist and getting the surgery.

A government news release says publicly funded, privately delivered surgeries historically performed about 15 per cent of the total surgeries in the province, then in 2020 that increased to almost 18 per cent to help with the COVID backlog. The province says the number of hip and knee replacement procedures rose by about 800 to nearly 7,100 surgeries and joint replacements were 50 per cent higher than pre-COVID in 2019-20.

The overall surgery wait list is down by about 4,600 or 14 per cent fewer patients and the number of people waiting more than 18 months is down by 67 per cent. Strategies from the Health Ministry and the Saskatchewan Health Authority to increase surgical capacity include hiring staff, expanding the involvement of private sector partners doing the surgeries, and developing focused improvements on orthopedics.

The opposition health critic says the latest national data shows that Saskatchewan still has the longest average wait times for knee and hip replacements. Vicki Mowat says the provincial government could be performing more surgeries if they were not sending patients to Calgary.