Anaesthesia for day-care surgery: a symposium (I). Day-care surgery in Canada: evolution, policy and experience of provinces.

Day-care surgery is a good alternative to conventional inpatient surgery. In Canada, all the provinces have day-care surgery programmes and British Columbia has a highly developed province-wide programme accounting for about 27 per cent of all operations; approximately 44 per cent of all operations in British Columbia could be done in day-care. Extrapolation of these figures nationally for the year 1975 indicates that Canadians could have saved approximately $209 million in hospital care by day-care surgery for all operations of the 25 procedures most commonly done in day-care. Further, if five other procedures which are suitable for day-care surgery had been so managed, there would have been a further potential of saving $62 million in Canada. Apart from economic justification, day-care surgery provides high quality care and is acceptable to patients and providers.