A cardiac surgeon at the Montreal Heart Institute says his hospital has adopted measures to get its wait list under control within six months.

Dr. Michel Carrier made his comments Thursday amid recent concerns over wait times after 65-year-old Jean-Guy Pitre died last week while waiting for heart surgery.

Pitre died after waiting more than five months for the operation to repair a blocked aorta, which was to take place at Montreal's Hôtel Dieu Hospital.

Officials at the University of Montreal Health Centre (CHUM), said it was forced to postpone Pitre's surgery because of a lack of beds in the intensive care unit.

While Pitre was not treated at the heart institute, patients there started to worry after his children when public with their father's story, said Dr. Carrier.

"We have more phone calls at the office. [We are] trying to reassure them," said Carrier.

Measures include the recent re-opening of a fourth operating room, which was closed for renovations last year, he said.

In addition, Carrier said the hospital has managed to keep more than three-quarters of the nurses it hired over the past few years, which will also help all patients to be seen within six months.

The hospital's head of medicine, Dr. Normand Racine, says the high retention rate is because of a series of new measures, including flexible work hours, an end to mandatory overtime, and smaller nursing units.

But Carrier cautioned that wait lists will never go away completely.

"One hundred patients, maybe 80 patients, that's the minimum we should go. We shouldn't go to zero. Zero means we have an open facility, unused. That would be ridiculous," he said.

The Heart Institute — which currently has a wait list of 217 patients — carries out more than one-quarter of all heart surgeries on the island of Montreal.

Meanwhile, amid the current controversy over wait times, there are reports that Quebec's director of emergency services has resigned.

The province asked Dr. Pierre Savard in June 2008 to lead a group asked to come up with ways to reduce wait times for emergency services.

According to La Presse, Health Minister Yves Bolduc would say only that Savard resigned because he wanted to return to his medical practice.

A spokeswoman for the minister's office said Savard's contract ends March 31 and he has told the minister that he does not want to renew it, the paper reported.