A Canadian think tank found Premier Scott Moe’s government had the second-highest number of people waiting for surgery in Canada, which resulted in a high number of patients passing away while waiting for their surgeries.On Thursday, Sask NDP Health Critic Vicki Mowat and Rural and Remote Health Critic Matt Love reacted to a recent study by Second Street, a conservative Canadian think tank.Second Street found, among the provinces that provided data, Saskatchewan had the second-highest number of people per capita who passed away while waiting for surgery.“We know that more and more people are spending their final months in pain and that’s just not acceptable,” said Love. “We have the longest waits for key procedures in Canada, so long that hundreds of people are dying each year due to the backlog. Our health system is going in the wrong direction.” Between 2022 and 2023, 402 people from Saskatchewan passed away while they were on a waiting list for surgery.This places Saskatchewan as the second-highest rate in Canada of deaths among residents on a surgical waiting list, with 336.5 deaths per 1,000,000 people.Since Moe became Premier, there’s been an increase of 66% in the number of deaths. Currently, there are approximately 28,000 people in Saskatchewan who are waiting to have surgery.Saskatchewan has the longest waiting times in Canada for important procedures such as knee and hip replacements.“Moe and the Sask Party are just throwing money at the issue without thinking about how to strengthen our public health system for the long term,” said Mowat. “After 16 years, this government is out of ideas and out of touch with what’s going on in our hospitals.”Second Street noted the Moe government did not provide information about how many people in Saskatchewan had passed away while waiting for diagnostic scans.Saskatchewan residents have unfortunately lost their lives while waiting for admission to the hospital, especially during prolonged emergency room waits and delays in off-loading patients from EMS services.“Solutions should and can be found in the public system,” said Mowat.The Western Standard did not receive a response from the Saskatchewan Health Authority or the Saskatchewan government.
