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Peace Country residents needing medical treatment will see a change by the end of the year as the Grande Prairie Regional Hospital plans to open for business, barring unforeseen circumstances.
“We are slated to open by the end of this calendar year,” said Stacy Greening, senior operating officer, Grande Prairie. “We should have a firmer date out here shortly. We will have an announcement shortly in terms of the exact date, but we will be up and operational, pending no further impacts by the pandemic, by the end of this calendar year.
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About 10,000 surgeries were delayed during Alberta's third wave of COVID-19, which pushed the province's intensive care units to the brink of capacity this spring.
By the time Dan Dlugosz finally gets surgery to replace both of his hips, he says he will have waited almost three years for the life-changing procedure.
Alberta aims to tackle surgical backlog: Minister Shandro
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The Albertan government has an ambitious plan to eliminate the current surgery backlog. In a press conference last Friday, Health Minister Tyler Shandro announced that the government and its health partners are pursuing an ambitious plan to provide 55,000 more scheduled surgeries in the coming fiscal year starting on April 1, in addition to the normal pre-pandemic volume of 290,000 surgeries, that would eliminate the pandemic backlog of postponed surgeries, and move towards completing their goal of treating every patient within a clinically acceptable time. Shandro noted that before the pandemic started, the UCP government had promised better access to the public all funded health care system.
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