One-year anniversary of weekend-surgery partnership proves successful

Over 1,000 additional surgical cases completed;

directly reducing wait times for hip and knee replacement surgery in Ontario

In the lead up to its one-year anniversary on April 1, the Toronto Regional Arthroplasty Collaborative (TRAC) is celebrating the completion of over 1,000 hip and knee replacements on weekends alone, helping to reduce wait times for patients across Ontario.

“That’s over 1,000 additional patient cases that wouldn’t have otherwise had surgery in that time period, and patients are seeing the results,” says Ru Taggar, Executive Vice President, Chief Nursing and Health Professions Executive at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. “These numbers are in addition to the hip and knee surgical case numbers performed during traditional ‘weekday’ elective surgery, and therefore are directly contributing to a reduction in the waitlist backlog for hip and knee arthroplasty in Ontario.”

Building on the success of its Hip and Knee Arthritis Program, on April 1, 2023, Sunnybrook’s Holland Orthopaedic & Arthritic Centre first opened its operating room (OR) on weekends in a partnership with Michael Garron Hospital, and later, Sinai Health and Unity Health, to help tackle wait times for hip and knee replacement surgery in the province.

With the new weekend OR time slots, orthopaedic surgeons from Sunnybrook and the partnering hospitals schedule and perform additional surgeries at Sunnybrook’s Holland Centre. Initially, the initiative opened two OR rooms, later expanding to four.

“Together, our hospitals have been directly contributing to a reduction in hip and knee replacement wait times for patients since this time last year, and will continue to do so,” says Taggar.

Currently, the average wait time for a patient to be seen by an orthopaedic specialist at a TRAC-partnering hospital from the time of referral is approximately four weeks.

Primary care practitioners can send their referrals through to the Toronto Region’s Central Intake Rapid Access Clinic