1st Manitoban to get surgery in Ohio under wait-list reduction agreement urges others to sign up
Winnipegger encourages anybody eligible for out-of-province surgery to take part, province covers all costs
Kim Kurylo is telling Manitobans their long-awaited hip replacement surgery could happen soon — so long as eligible people are willing to take a flight.
Kurylo is raving about her trip to Cleveland, Ohio., last month for a procedure she's been waiting for since 2019.
She wants other Manitobans to follow her lead, but says either not enough people know about the option or are willing to take part.
Since August, when the Manitoba government announced the new agreement for hip and knee surgeries in Ohio, only one person — Kurylo — has made the trip. She's jokingly called herself the "Canadian guinea pig."
"Why aren't people signing up? Our backlog could go down a lot faster if people would sign up for out-of-province, but it seems like some people are scared."
This year, the Manitoba government pledged to cover the cost for hundreds of people to get their surgeries in other jurisdictions. The province signed these arrangements to whittle down a massive backlog of patients waiting for surgeries and diagnostic tests, which was made worse by the pandemic.
Pace of surgeries expected to pick up
So far, 140 people have gone under the knife outside Manitoba, the government said on Monday.
Earlier this fall, a provincial spokesperson said the province expects the number of patients travelling out of Manitoba will grow more quickly as the process becomes streamlined and more people become aware of the opportunity.
Kurylo said she applied for the out-of-province option as soon as she became aware of it in September. She turned her focus south of the border after learning there was a demand — and, in turn, a growing wait — for northwestern Ontario, but not the United States.
The retired former MTS employee specifically asked for Ohio after friends of hers, who are medical professionals, lauded the Cleveland Clinic.
After looking at her medical records, her surgeon in Ohio — like the one in Manitoba — recognized how badly she needed hip replacement surgery.
Her left hip to begin to deteriorate in 2014 because of osteoarthritis, followed by her right hip in 2018. It got to the point where the avid hiker could no longer scale new heights on her B.C. trips, let alone plant a garden by herself at her Transcona home.
She got on the surgery wait list in the middle of 2019.
It would be two years at most for her first hip, she was told, but the pandemic — which closed operating rooms at times because surgical staff were needed in other areas of the hospital — extended her wait. Her hips reached a point of "severe degeneration," her surgeon told her.
The pain didn't go away, but "it starts to wear on you mentally," Kurylo said. "I was irritable, cranky, mad at a lot of things."
"I kept saying to myself, 'OK, you're not going to die from this. You don't have cancer. You're not having a heart attack. It's just your hips. They can fix them. They'll fix them.'
"That's how I used to talk to myself, but then it's getting to the point that I start calculating how much tax I've paid to … Manitoba Health over all these years and never used it, and now I need it and now I can't have it."
It was becoming clear a surgery in Manitoba in 2022 was becoming unlikely, which put Kurylo at her "wits' end," she said.
She could tell her surgeon was frustrated, too.
"He said, 'I know, I sit here every day telling my patients why I can't help them.'"
Kurylo said she was impressed at the ease in which her out-of-province procedure was arranged.
A member of the Manitoba diagnostic and surgical recovery task force called her 12 hours after she submitted her application. The province handled all travel and accommodation details.
All costs covered by Manitoba
Kurylo and the companion required to join her only had to pay out of pocket for their meals, but the province reimbursed them.
While in Cleveland in November, she was in regular contact with the Manitoba task force. She says staff from Cleveland were in touch before and after her successful surgery.
"I'd go back there in a minute," Kurylo said.
Not all Manitobans waiting for a hip or knee surgery are eligible for a trip outside the province. Eligible patients must be of normal weight, have no heart problems and cannot have a liver, kidney or blood-vessel condition, among other criteria.
More than 900 patients were waiting for an orthopedic hip replacement as of October of this year, a provincial dashboard says.
Kurylo is encouraging those patients who are healthy enough to get their procedure out of province. Not everybody has the choice, she said.
"If you could get 200 [surgeries] at each place [out of province], that's 800 people off the wait-list," she said. "Every day more people are going on the list and we're just not making significant progress."
This year, 86 spinal surgeries and 13 hip and knee procedures have been completed in Sanford, N.D., while Dryden, Ont., and Kenora, Ont., have conducted 29 and 11 hip and knee surgeries respectively, and one person has gone to Cleveland, the government said on Monday.
Kurylo has been told a second Manitoban is currently in Ohio for treatment.
Blame and action
The matter of out-of-province surgeries has become a political football at the legislature this year.
The Progressive Conservatives have said the initiative shows the government's willingness to get Manitobans the quickest medical care possible, while the NDP have condemned the government for letting the health-care system deteriorate to the point where out-of-province options are sought.
"We can blame whoever we want to blame," Kurylo said in response, "but in the meantime, I was impressed that they got this task force together and they actually did something."
The province said the task force is working to build surgical capacity in Manitoba to ensure the province can treat all of its citizens in the future.
Kurylo said she's waiting eagerly for the first week of 2023 when she can reapply for her second hip replacement to be done in Cleveland.
Manitobans interested in getting a surgery outside the province can apply online.
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