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Cambridge Memorial Hospital (CMH) has joined forces with Tri-City Colonoscopy Clinic (TCC) to offer more gastro-intestinal (GI) endoscopy procedures for people in the Waterloo area.
Dr. Augustin Nguyen, a gastroenterologist and TCC’s Medical Director, explained that COVID-19 really shook up healthcare and pushed providers to come up with new ways to deal with long wait times.
“As of July 2021, the hospital had a backlog of over 1,600 endoscopy cases, which is much more than what it normally has in any given year,” Nguyen said.
“By transferring medically appropriate, low-complexity cases to TCC, we can expect to help the hospital offset as many as 500 cases on that list.”
This new collaboration came about after a successful proposal was submitted to Ontario Health, which was looking for solutions to clear the procedure backlog caused by the pandemic.
Boosting health-care capacity
Stephanie Pearsall, VP clinical programs and chief nursing executive at CMH, said this partnership will add extra capacity over the next year.
“Coming through a pandemic, we knew that we were faced with a backlog of cases,” Pearsall told CBC K-W. She noted that most services had to be paused during the first wave of COVID-19.
“Throughout the waves we’ve done a really great job of getting those urgent and emergent cases through, but we knew that those lower acuity cases were starting to build and even when we’re running at a hundred per cent, it was going to be hard to affect that backlog.”
Pearsall reassured patients they’ll get care at TCC just like they do at CMH.
“It’s really access to care and your experience at Tri-City Colonoscopy will be your same experiences at Cambridge Memorial Hospital,” Pearsall told CBC K-W.
“We are really excited about it and we hope it’s the beginning of a further partnership down the road.”
