New Brunswick hip and knee replacement surgeries lag behind national benchmark: new report

Despite an increase in hip and knee replacement surgeries across New Brunswick, a new report from the New Brunswick Health Council finds the province still isn’t meeting the national benchmark.

“From a provincial health plan perspective, the objective was to get New Brunswick to a point where everyone’s able to get hip and knee surgery within the national guidelines, so about six months,” said New Brunswick Health Council CEO, Stéphane Robichaud.

“Now what we’re seeing is we’re still trending in the wrong direction.”

With a focus on access to surgery, the council looked into data from January 1 to March 31 of this year.

Robichaud says that right now there is still a big focus on catching up from the delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

He added during the first quarter of 2023, only 34 per cent of hip replacement surgeries and 26 per cent of knee replacement surgeries were completed within the recommended time of 182 days.

“What we’re hearing from the system is that they expect that they’ll be able to deal with those long waiters in this fiscal year and as we approach the end of this fiscal year we should start also seeing improvements,” he said.

However, there is some positives to come out of the latest data as well.

“What’s encouraging in the last year is we’ve definitely seen an increase in the number of surgeries performed. So, for example, in this first quarter of this year, January to March, we saw 415 surgeries and it compares to 180 the year previous. So it’s encouraging to see and it means that a lot of people from a surgical perspective are putting a lot of efforts,” said Robichaud.

He notes that patients waiting on surgery now have the option to access what wait times look like for each specific surgeon.

“What I found very interesting was how that can vary within one institution and when you think about it, given that there isn’t one central coordinated approach, what we have is some surgeons tend to be popular among primary care providers and they tend to have longer wait times while others don’t,” he said.

According to data released by the New Brunswick Health Council, there was 973 patients still waiting for hip replacement surgery as of March 31, with 84 of those people waiting for more than a year. For knee replacements, there were 2,143 New Brunswickers waiting as of March 31 with 366 waiting for more than a year.

The report also points out that wait times are measured, across the country, from when a patient has seen a specialist to the day of surgery, which might not be an accurate representation for everyone in the system.

“What the council has also done is just look at the situation from a patient’s perspective and how there’s other parts to that, so you need to see your primary care provider, whether you have one or you don’t have one influences the situation,” he said.

“When you add to that, the wait time to see their primary care provider, and then perhaps the wait time to see the specialist, all those elements add up and can spell much longer than the wait times that are measured, which is waiting for the surgery.”

Overall, he says bigger centres, where more surgeries occur, tend to have longer wait times, but there are zones within the province that are closer to meeting the national target.

In a statement to CTV News, the Department of Health said the fact that it is not meeting the current national benchmark is to be expected right now while they work at eliminating the longest-waiting surgeries.

“Once the longest-waiting hip and knee surgeries have been eliminated, the department will be better positioned to meet the national benchmarks,” said communications officer Sean Hatchard.

He adds there have been ongoing efforts across the province to reduce wait lists and improve access to care.

“The number of New Brunswickers waiting more than a year for hip and knee replacement surgeries has decreased from 700 in 2022 to about 400 by May 2023. From Sept. 1, 2022 to May 31, 2023, a total of 944 long-waiting hip and knee replacement surgeries were completed,” he said.

“At this rate, by the end of June 2024, no patient will wait longer than 12 months for hip or knee replacement surgery in the province.”

Hatchard points to initiatives like Horizon Health Network’s high-intensity interval theatre, which saw hip and knee replacements take place after hours or on weekends over the past year.

While the New Brunswick Health Council states the province still isn’t where it needs to be when it comes to timely access to hip and knee replacement surgeries, the new data has left Robichaud hopeful.

“What’s obvious is that there’s been a very strong coordinated approach to this in the recent year, so a lot of stakeholders from RHA, the department, have been working very closely to have a coordinated approach,” he said.

“It was slow to start, it was difficult, it’s not normal for the system to work in an integrated fashion, but it’s encouraging to see the progress that’s been made today.”

For the latest New Brunswick news, visit our dedicated provincial page.