Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children has announced it will begin to “cautiously” increase capacity for scheduled surgical procedures on Monday, January 16, 2023.

Photo: Raysonho @ Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

In a statement, the hospital says its patient census began to stabilize over the past few weeks and return to levels typically seen at this time of year.

SickKids began reducing surgical activity on November 14, 2022 in efforts to prioritize urgent, emergency and the most time-sensitive surgeries.

At the time, the hospital said its Intensive Care Unit was working above 127 percent capacity for several days.

Dr. Simon Kelley, Associate Chief of Perioperative Services, Clinical and Ambulatory at SickKids says they have been experiencing some of the most challenging months SickKids has ever seen.

“The extraordinary collaboration within the hospital and vital support of our partners across the system have allowed us to maintain emergent, urgent and highly time-sensitive surgical services for our patients.”

He added, “Despite resource constraints and changes to surgical operations, we are proud to have completed over 11,200 surgeries in 2022 – more than 92 per cent of our pre-pandemic volumes.”

SickKids says as surgical activity increases, its teams continue to work through a significant backlog of more than 6-thousand patients.

Families who are waiting for a surgery date will be contacted in the coming months as their procedures are able to be booked.