N.B. health authorities dispute claims of long abortion wait times

New Brunswick's two health authorities are disputing the suggestion that patients seeking surgical abortions have to wait several weeks to have the procedure at the three hospitals offering the service.

Horizon Health and Vitalité Health were responding to the manager of Clinic 554 in Fredericton, who said a woman was recently referred to the clinic because she could not get an appointment in Moncton before the end of December. 

Christa Wheeler-Thorne, the executive director at the Moncton Hospital, said in a statement to CBC News that on Wednesday, surgical abortions were being booked for next Thursday, Nov. 23.

"Women do not require a physician referral to receive services at the Family Planning Clinic at Horizon's The Moncton Hospital and are scheduled for the next available appointment time," she said.

"If there is a wait time, it is usually no more than one or two weeks, and this has been consistent for many years."

Vitalité Health said in a statement its clinics at Bathurst's Chaleur Hospital and the Dr. Georges-L.-Dumont University Hospital Centre in Moncton "are not overloaded and do not have a waiting list."

A first appointment can usually be scheduled within 48 hours, and abortions are typically performed within 10 business days, said Karen Frenette, the corporate director of outpatient clinics at Vitalité.

The two hospitals "have the capacity to accommodate a higher demand," she said.

The issue of wait times flared again this week following the publication of a research study that recommended the province allow Medicare to fund surgical abortions, also known as procedural abortions, in clinics outside hospitals.

The study found that more than 60 percent of patients using Fredericton's Clinic 554 — which charges a $700 fee for most procedural abortions — are able to get the procedure before the ninth week of pregnancy.

That compares to only 30 per cent of the procedures at Canadian hospitals happening before the ninth week, the report said.

"That seems to suggest some procedural barriers just in accessing the hospital system," said Prof. Jula Hughes, the report's lead author.

The report did not provide a timeline comparison with the three New Brunswick hospitals providing the service.

Health Minister Bruce Fitch told reporters Wednesday that "we're not seeing the wait line or the wait times" in those three hospitals.

Clinic 554 director Valerya Edelman responded that a patient was recently referred to the clinic who couldn't get an appointment until early December in Bathurst and late December in Moncton.

That would have put the woman past the gestational point where those hospitals' policies allow them to do procedural abortions, she said.

Asked Thursday about the statements from the two health authorities, Edelman said a nurse who referred the patient to her told her about the December timelines for appointments and she could not explain the discrepancy.

She said typically patients at Clinic 554 tell her they encounter a wait time of two to four weeks at the hospitals. 

The medical director at the clinic, Dr. Adrien Edgar, insisted in an email to Horizon CEO Margaret Melanson Thursday morning that the wait list "is over a month long" at the Moncton Hospital.

"We routinely receive referrals for patients who are unable to obtain an appointment for an abortion in the hospital before Horizon's gestational limit is passed," he said in the email, which he copied to reporters. 

He said the arguments Fitch and Melanson used for funding cataract surgeries in private clinics outside hospitals — such as shorter turnaround times between patients and no competition for operating room time — are also good reasons to fund clinic abortions.