On Friday, Horizon Health announced a plan to invest about $6.4 million in operating rooms (ORs) at the Sackville hospital and three other community hospitals in the province. In Sackville, that means spending about $2 million to upgrade one operating room that’s currently in use, and renovate another room to make it functional again.

The overall plan is to ramp up the use of ORs in community hospitals across the province to help alleviate the surgical backlog for less complex day surgeries, which will in turn allow more complex surgeries to happen more quickly in the regional hospitals.

“These programs will not only increase the number of hip and knee replacements completed each year, but in many cases, they will also increase our capacity for orthopedic surgery, cataract surgery, endoscopy and other procedures,” says acting Horizon CEO Margaret Melanson. “Augmenting the surgical services at these community facilities will also allow our regional hospitals to complete more complex and acute cases, which is a win-win for the broader healthcare system.”

Operating rooms are part of the centralized surgical system at Horizon. Surgeons currently have access to book one operating theatre at the Sackville hospital, for a variety of services and procedures, most of which are day surgeries, says Amy McCavour, Horizon’s Co-Leader of Surgical and Intensive Care. The second operating room theatre, “hasn’t been upgraded in several years,” says McCavour. “It wouldn’t pass the requirements that are needed today. So that one has to be completely rebuilt, whereas the existing one just needs an upgrade.”

McCavour says the renovation and revitalization of the second operating theatre will mean Sackville can accommodate an arthroplasty program such as the one happening at St. Joseph’s Hospital since 2020. “The success of that program at St. Joe’s has helped us reduce our waitlist for hips and knees to the national benchmark within about a year and a half,” says McCavour. “And that was even throughout the pandemic. So we’re hoping that this initiative will help reduce [this region’s] procedures to the national benchmark as well.”

It’s expected that surgeons and anesthetists will travel from Moncton to use the refurbished Sackville ORs, but clinical staffing, such as nurses, physiotherapists, and technicians will need to be recruited and hired to run the second room. “Our intention is to be very optimistic that we will be able to successfully staff these two operating room theatres by the time they are able to be both utilized,” says Melanson.

Construction is expected to begin on the ORs in spring 2023, and an architect has already been hired to start planning the renovations.

Melanson says the project will be paid for by Horizon capital funds and capital improvement budget, but that the hospital foundation, which raises funds to help support equipment purchases for the hospital, could become a partner.

“We have had an introductory discussion with the Sackville Foundation, says Melanson, “and I believe they would be very interested in assisting us with specific equipment needs. But those have not been delved into at this time. At this point in time, the planned renovations are definitely being undertaken using Horizon related funds.”

Sackville Memorial Hospital Foundation chair Bill Evans says that the foundation has been informed about the OR expansion project and is enthusiastic about the prospect. “This is exactly the type of thing that the foundation supports,” says Evans. He says he’ll wait to hear what additional infrastructure or equipment Horizon staff recommend for the project, and the Foundation could include it in their next campaign.

The federal government gave the province of New Brunswick $41 million in the current fiscal year to help alleviate the surgical backlog caused by COVID-19. The money showed up as unspent surplus in provincial projections at the end of August, and CBC’s Jacques Poitras later reported that it would be allocated to the Department of Health this fiscal year.

It’s not clear whether the province will be spending some of that $41 million on Horizon’s $6.4 million OR expansion project. CHMA has reached out government spokespeople for that answer.