Nurses bash privatizing surgery
Nanaimo News Bulletin,  May 27, 2006 
The Vancouver Island Health Authority's plan to contract out surgeries to private clinics to reduce wait times will undermine the public health-care system, says the B.C. Nurses' Union.

The health authority is asking private clinics on the Island for proposals to provide simple surgical procedures, like hernias, dental and cataracts surgery, under contract for five years.

"The ultimate goal is to improve access to day procedures and reduce wait times," said Suzanne Germain, health authority spokeswoman.
Private surgical centres have less overhead, less infrastructure and can perform more surgeries more efficiently, said Germain.

"We have no interest in doing this if it costs us more," Germain said.
But the nurses' union said that as the private clinics go on recruiting drives to attract staff to fulfill contracts, the shortage of nurses and other health care workers will get worse.

"It will make the shortage of nurses even greater," said Rhon L'Heureux, spokesman for the BC Nurses' Union. "When they [private clinics] go on recruiting drives they'll take nurses from the public sector."

Contracting out simple surgeries to private centres will allow the hospital to deal with more complicated surgeries, like hip replacements, said Germain.
"It allows us to focus on more complicated surgeries, the ones that need overnight hospitalization," Germain said.

The health authority saves some surgery room time at hospitals for emergency and trauma cases, but for the most part they're completely full, said Germain.
"We're pretty much maxed out in our acute care facilities," Germain said. "We're pretty much going full tilt."

Surgeries were contacted out in early 2005 after the health authority received one-time federal government funding to address wait lists and in 2004 to clear the backlog from the Health Employees' Union strike.
L'Heureux said that money could have been used to recruit nurses to staff unused operating room hours.

"It saddens me that they're doing this - using health-care funds to demoralize the public system," L'Heureux said.

The health authority will use the same wait lists, which will prevent queue-jumping, and the same surgeons, said Germain.

"All we're really changing here is the location," Germain said. "It's still publicly-funded health care."

The request for proposals closes June 16 and the health authority expects to have contracts signed later this summer.