BY HEIDI ULRICHSEN
A mentally disabled Elliot Lake man will have to live with a painful stomach condition for a few more months because Sudbury Regional Hospital (SRH) has a limit on the surgery he needs.
The middle-aged man, who was born with his stomach in the wrong place, suffers from severe and painful dry heaves. His condition can be cured by a procedure called laparoscopic anti-reflux surgery, which would change the position of his stomach.
However, the hospital has limited Sudbury?s two thoracic surgeons to doing just 25 of these surgeries in a fiscal year, and they have already surpassed their limit.
The man was originally scheduled for surgery at Sudbury Regional Hospital in December, but the procedure was cancelled twice, says Heather Tassé, a home support worker for Community Living Algoma who helps to care for the man.
The man?s surgeon, who has asked not to be named, told Tassé the hospital isn?t allowing him to perform any laparoscopic anti-reflux surgeries from the beginning of February until the end of March, when the fiscal year ends.
Demand for his services has been increasing over the past few years. He is one of only a few doctors in the province able to perform anti-reflux surgery in a minimally invasive fashion.
Tassé says her client is near the top of the surgeon?s 14-month waiting list, because he is in so much pain.
?How can you put a cap on people?s health?? asks Tassé. ?Maybe more people should ask why (the surgeon) is being limited in the number of these procedures he does. I mean, that?s ludicrous.?
SRH chief of staff Dr. Chris McKibbon says the hospital has many surgical priorities, and must decide how to allocate funding within their tight budget.
The hospital puts a cap on many types of surgeries, not just laparoscopic anti-reflux surgery, he says.
?One of the things that you need to understand is that we?re funded for particular volumes of all kinds of things. We project how many cardiac
surgeries, knee replacements and cataracts we?re going to do,? says the doctor.
?The struggle is try to do the best we can to get it right and actually deliver on our commitments. So is this (capping numbers of surgeries) unique? Not at all.?
When new surgical procedures are developed and become popular, officials need to ?step back, take a deep breath and do an analysis about what (the hospital?s) limits are,? says McKibbon.
Even if a local doctor has the expertise to do a certain type of surgery, it?s not necessarily appropriate to provide it at SRH, he says.
?We have the expertise to do many things that we don?t do because they?re not part of our mission or mandate. It?s our opinion that even though
there may be someone who may have a particular skill, there is a program somewhere else that we should be deferring to.?
