Patients who have been waiting more than a year for surgery in Quebec will be given priority when possible, according to Health Minister Christian Dubé.

Dubé acknowledged Wednesday at a press conference in Quebec City that the fifth wave of the pandemic has forced him to review the catch-up plans developed by his department last summer.

On Wednesday, La Presse reported that rather than decreasing, the waiting list has, in fact, grown by 7,500 people since October to reach 158,933 patients as of Jan. 29.

Of these, just over 20,000 have been waiting for surgery for a year or more, with 3,500 patients waiting two years or more.

These are the patients that Quebec will prioritize, but the network will not be rushed, Dubé said.

"I want people to understand that we are coming out of a two-year pandemic and the worst thing we could do is try to solve a two-year problem in three months. We're not going to put extra pressure on nurses at a time when everyone needs a break," he said. 

Dubé added that "right now, I have a focus -- it's operations over 12 months."

He is scheduled to meet with the CEOs of the regional jurisdictions next week to try to balance the effort "because this is not a problem that is in all regions. There are more specific regions" that are more behind.

Despite this, he maintains that the public "will see a change in these statistics in the coming months, but with respect to health care workers." His immediate priority is to "stabilize the teams."

4,500 MORE NURSES

In this regard, the health minister said he is pleased with the contribution of private clinics, which have allowed the number of operations to increase to 75 per cent of normal capacity. However, he did not want to say whether it would be possible to reach 100 per cent of the normal rate with the support of the private sector, while avoiding increasing the pressure on the network. "Let's wait and see when we stabilize", he said.

However, he was pleased to have met and exceeded his goal announced last fall of recruiting 4,000 new nurses through his retention program. This program added new bonuses for nurses, some of which are slow to be paid because of the administrative burden of the pay system.

Dubé revealed Wednesday that he has secured 2,500 new commitments to work in the health network and that more than 5,500 part-time nurses have agreed to go full-time.

"When you take the ratio of the 5,500 who have gone full-time and you do the full-time equivalent, that's the equivalent of having hired more than 2,000 more people," he said, adding that he has reached 4,500 in total.

"But it's not enough," he added. "It was ambitious, I'm glad we accomplished that, but given what we're going through, the general fatigue of the network, we're going to continue to look for staff because we have to give a chance to those who are there right now."

Dubé made the comments during a media conference with Labour and Immigration Minister Jean Boulet about the launch of a campaign to recruit 1,000 nurses over two years abroad.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Feb. 16, 2022.