Cash infusion from province means that more children are getting surgeries on time

There have been no surgical cancellations due to bed availability at McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton, Ont., for more than a year. This is mostly thanks to an infusion of $48 million to the facility from the government of Ontario, the hospital says.The situation now is very different than it was in late 2022, when Dr. Devin Peterson, chief of pediatric surgery at McMaster Children’s Hospital told TVO Today that the situation at the hospital was “horrible.” The hospital announced in October 2022 that it needed to reduce the number of scheduled surgeries it could perform due to pressures across all of its programs. The crunch was due to high rates of respiratory infections and also staffing issues. The hospital limited surgeries that required post-surgical inpatient care to just one surgery a day. This meant that the hospital was cancelling three to four surgeries a day, which doesn’t include surgeries that were never booked, Dr. Peterson explained at the time. Day surgeries continued.Then the money came in July 2023, “the largest investment in the hospital’s history,” it claims on its website. The money went to 24 pediatric programs to enhance services, hire more staff and buy new equipment.The funding was part of a larger $330 million investment into provincial pediatric care centres, including Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa, SickKids in Toronto and London Health Sciences Centre's Childrens' Hospital. It came as a direct result of a campaign by the centres called Make Kids Count. McMaster Children’s Hospital was able to hire staff and increase the number of beds in the surgical area and critical care unit. It's now been more than a year since the hospital’s surgical team has cancelled a surgery due to inpatient bed availability, although there have been surgical cancellations for other reasons.The hospital provided the example of an 11-year-old girl’s recent surgery for scoliosis. The timing is important for scoliosis surgery, because when a child goes through a growth spurt, “the curve can get very bad, very quickly,” Dr. Peterson said in a press release from the hospital.“Having to call families to cancel their child’s surgery were some of the most difficult conversations I’ve had to have,” Dr. Peterson said. “Years ago, we could not have done a lot of the innovative surgeries we’re doing now because the kids waited too long for surgery. It was tragic for kids, families and our whole team. But now, we’re getting to kids quicker, so their scoliosis isn’t getting as bad, which means we’re getting better results for the children and the healthcare system.”Read: B.C. to provide $155.7 million to recruit and retain specialized health workers

Cash infusion from province means that more children are getting surgeries on time

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