The hospital in Golden, BC, was one of seven rural hospitals included in a recently published study. Photo via Google Street View.
Michelle Gamage 30 Jun 2025 The Tyee
Patients do just as well in farther-flung operating rooms, one health expert has found.
Performing minor surgeries in rural hospitals could help improve the provincial surgery backlog without cutting corners on the quality of health care, according to one rural health expert.
A recent study published in the Canadian Journal of Surgery compared patient outcomes for minor surgeries, looking at how patients did if they were operated on by a family physician with enhanced surgical skills or by a specialist surgeon, and if they were at a rural hospital, like the Creston Valley Hospital and Health Centre, or a larger referral facility, like the ones in Kelowna, Kamloops, Cranbrook and Prince George.
Turns out patients did great no matter who their surgeon was or where their surgery was, which shows that there’s room to grow high-quality rural health care in B.C., said Jude Kornelsen, lead author of the study. Kornelsen is also an associate professor in the department of family practice at the University of British Columbia and co-director of the Centre for Rural Health Research.
That doesn’t mean all surgeries should be moved to small towns, she said. But low-risk patients from across the province who need low-acuity surgeries and procedures, such as colonoscopies, hernia repairs, appendectomies or caesarean deliveries, could be given the choice of getting their surgery at a hospital near their home or travelling to a rural hospital.
This would help lower the demand for operating rooms in larger urban centres, which would free up those teams to focus on the more complex or high-risk surgeries that they’re set up for, Kornelsen said.
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