The province has announced a new program to help expedite some joint replacement surgeries, and one orthopedic surgeon admits there are some significant backlogs.

The new program announced on Thursday will see qualifying patients get their surgery as an outpatient procedure, meaning they will get to go home the same day.

The goal of the program is to reduce backlogs and wait times for such surgeries.

Surgeon Dr. Keegan Au explains there are currently about 3,000 people in the province on the waitlist for an orthopedic procedure, with over 2,500 of those waiting for hip and knee replacements.

Au doesn’t have any figures as to how those numbers compare across the country but does say Eastern health performs about 1,400 joint replacements in a year.

So “that is a pretty big number in terms of a backlog” according to Au. He says the problem isn’t going to go away overnight, and they need to have a strategic plan to chip away at those numbers.