Since 2003, Saskatchewan’s Surgical Registry has provided a comprehensive database of patients waiting for surgery and detailed information about surgery performed. Data from the Registry informs resource planning by government, supports service delivery by the SHA, and gives patients transparent information and equitable access to the care.
Booking Form
Maintaining a Surgical Registry requires standardization among hospitals and surgical facilities in how information about surgical cases is collected and reported. To that end, the Ministry provides a single surgical booking form for use by surgeons, which ensures that the same information is collected province-wide. Booking Forms for Regina and Saskatoon have customized physician order sections.
Diagnosis-based Prioritization
Saskatchewan’s old method of surgical prioritization is currently being replaced with a new method that assigns priority for surgical procedures based on standard categories of patient diagnosis. The Saskatchewan Surgical Council, Saskatchewan Health Authority, and the Ministry of Health support this initiative.
As of April 1 2024, surgeons will be required to provide the following new data when submitting a surgical booking form: a six-character diagnosis code and the associated diagnosis description, which you will find on the Saskatchewan Diagnosis Code List 2024-25.
Questions or concerns can be addressed to surgical.registry@health.gov.sk.ca
Saskatchewan was the first province in Canada to create a Surgical Registry and provide IT infrastructure for a single provincial repository of surgical patient data. Collecting and maintaining accurate data on surgical wait lists and the number and type of surgeries performed is beneficial to the public, the Ministry and the health system.
Orthopedic surgery diagnosis-code-builder
While most surgical specialties are provided with a list of complete diagnosis codes, orthopedic surgeons individually select the patient’s diagnosis, the affected part of the body, and the level of functional disability for each surgical case. In total there are more than 2,000 possible combinations of diagnosis, body part and level of urgency. To streamline this process for orthopedic surgeons, a code-builder function was developed by data experts at the Ministry of Health and is available here. This is a web-based tool and no download is required.
Ortho Code-Builder