New cataract surgery clinic expected to reduce wait times on P.E.I.
Clinic will not be private, Health P.E.I.'s CEO assures legislative committee
A new outpatient clinic for cataract surgery opening this fall will help reduce wait times for the procedure, Health P.E.I. says.
CEO Melanie Fraser said more complex cases will still require operations to be done in a hospital, but the goal is to cut wait times over the next two years.
"Across many jurisdictions, these focus clinics have been set up and because they are focused on doing one particular type of low-acuity procedure and they do those at a high volume, they can manage to process many, many more surgeries and many more procedures in a given day," Fraser said.
In its first year, the clinic will do 2,000 procedures, and 4,000 the following year.
Fraser was speaking to a legislative standing committee on Tuesday.
Some MLAs on the committee were concerned the new clinic sounded like privatization of health care. Fraser assured them it would be funded by the province, patients will not need to pay for procedures out of pocket, and no one can jump the queue by paying.
The benchmark waiting period for cataract surgery across Canada is 112 days. On P.E.I., the average wait time is about 264 days.
With files from Stacey Janzer