Pediatric Surgical Outreach: An Underutilized Resource for Increasing Children's Surgical Capacity in Canada
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Key Takeaways
- Only 8 of 18 Canadian children's hospitals currently offer pediatric surgical outreach services despite unprecedented wait times.
- Outreach services include inpatient coverage at 2 sites and outpatient clinics at 19 sites across 7 of 10 provinces.
- Less than half of Canadian children's hospitals have developed surgical outreach programs, representing untapped capacity.
- Expanding pediatric surgical outreach could improve access to care for geographically remote children facing long wait times.
- Survey of surgical leaders reveals significant opportunity to scale outreach as a strategy to address capacity challenges.
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In Canada, there are currently unprecedented wait times for children's hospital-based surgical services. What is the state of pediatric surgical outreach as an option to address these challenges? I'm Alex Halper, a Research Fellow at Children's National, and this is an article that you should know. Bar at all sent out an electronic survey to all Canadian children's hospital surgical leaders to try and answer this question. There were 18 survey respondents who reported that pediatric surgical outreach services were available in 8 out of the 18 children's hospitals and in 7 out of the 10 provinces. These services included inpatient coverage at two sites and two provinces, an outpatient ambulatory clinic coverage at 19 sites and four provinces. So it seems like less than half of Canadian children's hospitals have a developed surgical outreach program, and a focus on these could increase access to surgical care for geographically remote children. Let us know what you think in the comments below.