June 5, 2015
Story and photos by Heather Kipling
The operating room at the Innisfail Health Centre will see more patients than ever as new day surgery services are now available at the facility to serve residents in central Alberta.
Carpal tunnel surgery, breast reductions/augmentations, and tendon repairs can now be performed in Innisfail with the addition of a plastic surgery program, which launched in February. The program runs seven days a month, serving patients from across Alberta Health Services Central Zone.
The ophthalmology program at the facility is also expanding to include surgeries to repair detached or damaged retinas. These surgeries are being offered one day per month.
“We are very excited about the surgical program, not just for Innisfail, but for all central Alberta,” says Suzanne Telford, site manager at the Innisfail Health Centre.“Increasing our surgical capacity here provides a valuable service to our community and helps us in working to decrease wait times for patients.
“Adding these programs also means we’re able to offer specialized services closer to home for patients who might otherwise have to travel to larger centres.”
The retinal surgery service complements the existing local retina clinic and ophthalmology program, which opened at the site in 2013.
Bringing ophthalmology to Innisfail was part of a surgical-capacity-increase initiative in the zone that saw the program moved from the Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre to free up operating room time there for more complex emergent and elective surgeries.
“Our ophthalmology program serves a wide variety of eye health conditions, such as glaucoma, vision loss, retinal issues and cataracts,” says Telford. “We do a large number of cataract surgeries here and we are continuing to see more as we are now able to do complex procedures that require general anesthetic.”
The clinic also offers specialized eye-related procedures that include eyelid surgery and plastic surgery, and procedures to clear cloudy vision in the lens.
Once fully implemented, the Innisfail Health Centre could see an annual volume of nearly 100 retinal surgeries per year. About 450 required and elective procedures will be completed through the plastic surgery program.
To accommodate the additional programs, new equipment was also purchased. A new operating table, an anesthetic machine, a cautery machine, additional surgical instruments and a nerve stimulator, which uses mild electric currents to stimulate the nerves, have been added to support the expansion of surgical services. A number of the purchases were made possible by donations through the Red Deer
Regional Health Foundation and annual fundraising initiatives like the Cattle Round Up and staff 50/50 lotto.
“Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre serves patients from across the zone, so any time we can help provide equipment in other facilities that helps relieve pressure on the hospital and allows people to access services closer to home it’s a win-win situation,” says Iaian Park, Executive Director of the Red Deer Regional Health Foundation. “Being able to support sites in purchasing equipment to expand or enhance their services benefits the whole zone.”
