Doctors in several states are warning elective surgery waitlists in public hospitals could blowout again, much like we saw in the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic. A return of the virus, combined with devastating budget cuts are seeing hospitals pushed to their limits once again.
Wait times for elective surgeries in many states are at risk of returning to similar levels seen in 2022, when the pandemic era suspensions were lifted.
Research from the Australian Medical Association (AMA) shows surgery wait times across all states and territories are generally increasing, and have substantially increased in the past two decades.
“Australians are now waiting almost twice as long on average for planned surgery than they were 20 years ago” says AMA national president Professor Steve Robson.
What is elective surgery?
It’s important to remember that ‘elective surgery’ is not ‘optional surgery’ and actually refers to any non-emergency surgery that can be delayed more than 24 hours.
As you can imagine, this means nearly all surgeries fall under this category, no matter how necessary they may be. Someone waiting for a hip replacement may be in excruciating pain every day – but it’s not likely to kill them in the next day.
Even among elective surgeries, there are different levels of severity used to triage cases:
- Category 1 patients are considered urgent (but not immediately life-threatening) and hospitals will try to ensure you receive surgery within 30 days.
- Category 2 patients are considered semi-urgent, and hospitals will try to ensure you have surgery within 90 days.
- Category 3 patients usually have their surgery booked within a year.
The words ‘try’ and ‘usually’ are doing a lot of heavy lifting here, and hospitals across the country are struggling to meet these targets.
Queensland
Surging winter COVID case numbers in Queensland are seeing an average of 20 children admitted to hospital each day, with that number expected to rise to 50 in coming weeks.
Australian Medical Association (AMA) Queensland vice president Dr Emilia Dauway told The Today Show the excess cases are impacting hospitals’ ability to perform non-emergency surgeries.
“Between just COVID and the flu, we had 5,000 cases in Queensland [last month] and we have 500 people that are hospitalised currently,” she said.
“We can’t do hernia, gallbladder surgeries or knee replacement surgeries. So, the things that hospitals want to do in terms of our service capacity – if we don’t have bed capacity – are significantly reduced and compromised.”
Victoria
In Victoria, more than 20 regional hospitals will have their budgets cut by as much as 30 per cent over the next financial year.
Despite taking a goal of 240,000 elective surgeries to the 2022 election, the Allen state government has been forced to cut health funding in order to reign in debt.
Hospitals have been told to “streamline spending”, and some have already announced pauses on elective surgery.
Hand surgeon Dr Jill Tomlinson, AMA Victoria president, told The Age she’s worried the restrictions will create a snowball effect of further staff shortages.
“It is very concerning, and it makes me wonder whether the government and department have not learned from the pauses in elective surgery across the pandemic,” she said.
“We saw it across the pandemic – it actually reduced and decimated the surgical workforce, such that they then had to spend money on training people to build up the surgical workforce again.”
New South Wales
Elective surgeries are still happening in NSW, but wait times are currently the worst in the nation. Increasing COVID numbers in Sydney are putting enormous pressure on hospital staff, with two new urgent care clinics opening to try to ease the load.
NSW public health workers are noted as being the lowest paid in the country, which doesn’t look like changing. The recent first budget of the Minns government delivered a tiny 0.87 per cent increase in health spending – a figure that will quickly be eaten up by inflation, effectively resulting in a cut.
Western Australia
Elective surgery wait times in WA have been declining since before the pandemic. Current median wait time for all elective categories has blown out to 51 days, which is the longest in the state’s history and higher than the national average of 49 days.
WA has recently begun increasing public health spending, arresting years of funding decline. Even so, their per-person expenditure of $1374 is the lowest of any state or territory.
South Australia
In South Australia, the state’s code yellow emergency ban on elective surgeries – declared two weeks ago due staff shortages – has eased for day procedures, but restrictions remain on surgeries requiring an overnight stay in hospital.
SA health department chief executive Dr Robyn Lawrence told reporters she would not commit to a specific time overnight surgeries could resume.
“I’m not going to put a timeline on the continuation of the code yellow. We will continue to review it on a daily basis.,” she said.
“The priority next is to get back our multi-day surgery, the remaining 10 per cent of activity that is still in reduction — once we’ve done that safely and we’re comfortable then I will consider standing down the code yellow.”
Tasmania
Tasmania lags most states and territories in overall hospital performance, and elective surgery wait times are no different. At a median of 53 days, Tasmanians wait four more days for procedures than the national average.
AMA Tasmania president Dr John Saul says improving hospital performance in Tasmania is mostly a matter of funding.
“Addressing these issues requires sustained investment in beds, resources, and infrastructure,” he says.
“We need governments of all levels to work together to invest in public hospitals, primary care, older person care, disability services, and a Medicare system that keeps pace with the economic climate.”
Australian Capital Territory
Median wait times in the ACT are pretty much right on the national average, but has the worst performance in the country for seeing category 2 patients. Just six years ago, 81 per cent of category 2 patients were seen within the recommended 90 days, but this has fallen to just 49 per cent in 2024.
Northern Territory
The Top End actually punches above its weight when it comes to getting elective surgeries done, with median wait time just 29 days – far below the national average and the best of any state or territory.
Are you waiting for elective surgery? How long have you been waiting? Let us know in the comments section below.
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Why is it the state and federal governments dont have the mental capacity to see when waiting times 20 years ago compared to now . They have bought about 5 million people here over the last 20 years but they have done very Little to cater for all these extra people. Dont have to be very intelligent to work this out.
Well, why aren’t we surprised by this. Labour in power, Federally, as well as all of the states, except Tasmania. Health is never first on their priorities. All of their woke, and feel-good policies have to be implemented first, before health is even thought about.
Health was put last once governments felt that COVID was “over.” It has never gone away, and has a current surge. But Business and the Economy were seen to take priority. In addition, in the ACT we have Light Rail. A funding black hole that takes precedence over everything else, most notably health and education.