It will take the Social Security Service in Costa Rica (CCSS) approximately four months to make up for the cancelled surgeries and appointments during the labor union’s strike that began back back September 10th and is still ongoing.

Last Saturday, several of the labor unions involving employees of the CCSS came to an agreement with the Government and health authorities to stop the strike and return to their work.

The strike caused the suspension of close to 3,600 surgeries and over 114 thousand appointments. The hospitals that suffered the most problems are the Escalante Padilla in Perez Zeledon, the Manuel Mora Valverde in Golfito and Tony Facio in Limon.

According to Roman Macaya, President of the CCSS, 28% of the surgeries that were suspended during the strike were reprogrammed during the four weeks of strike since these were urgent and considered priority, now the hospitals have the challenge of making up for the rest of the pending procedures.

“The challenge is big, but it is manageable, we consider that in close to 4 months we should be able to catch up with these suspended surgeries”, stated Macaya.

Personnel will work on an extended schedule including weekends to handle pending surgeries, a separate customer service line will be made available in the upcoming days for patients to receive a more efficient service and get their questions answered.

Macaya also commented that although most hospitals are operating almost normally as of this Monday, there are still affected services and therefore they are dealing with some of the effects of the strike.