Thousands wait too long for surgery

Date
    October 22, 2014


More than 25,000 Victorian patients waited too long for semi-urgent elective surgery, including hip and knee replacements, last financial year, new figures show.      

Performance data released by Health Minister David Davis on Wednesday showed 69 per cent of Victorians received semi-urgent surgery within clinically recommended times in 2013-14, down from 75 per cent three years earlier.

The government's target is for 80 per cent of semi-urgent surgery to be performed within 90 days. Signs of strain were apparent at some of Melbourne's major hospitals where only half of patients received semi-urgent surgery within clinically recommended times last financial year.

These included Dandenong (49 per cent on time) and the Frankston, Royal Melbourne and Royal Women's hospitals (51 per cent).

Other hospitals with low percentages of patients receiving semi-urgent surgery on time were Monash Medical Centre in Clayton and Casey Hospital (53 per cent), the Austin (55 per cent) and Royal Children's Hospital (62 per cent).

Semi-urgent elective surgery performance has declined dramatically at some hospitals under the Coalition government.

Four times more women had to wait longer than 90 days for semi-urgent surgery at the Royal Women's Hospital last year (1348 patients) than in 2010-11 (301 patients).

At the Royal Children's Hospital, 1366 children had to wait more than 90 days for semi-urgent surgery last year, almost five times more than in 2010-11.

Semi-urgent surgery for children can include hernia and tonsil removals and insertion of grommets to improve hearing.

A total of 38,078 patients were waiting for elective surgery in Victoria's public hospitals on June 30. This is down from a peak of 50,000 in March last year but similar to the waiting list inherited by the government when it took office.

Mr Davis said more than 17,000 additional patients received elective surgery in 2013-14 compared to the year before, in what was the largest annual increase in the number of patients admitted from waiting lists since 1999-2000.

He said federal funding cuts had pushed up waiting lists in 2012-13 and "it's no secret the [state] government has sought to bring them down and has been successful".

Australian Nursing Federation state secretary Lisa Fitzpatrick said the government had held a short-term surgery blitz "so that data released prior to the election looks better".      

She said patients were putting up with pain each day they waited for surgery.      

Victorian chairman of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons Jason Chuen called for both political parties to outline how they would fund Victorian hospitals to meet demand in coming years. 

Mr Chuen said while both parties had invested in building new hospitals such as the Royal Children's, Bendigo and Box Hill over the past decade, the public hospital system required ongoing increases in funding to perform its day-to-day work.

"Whilst we applaud that infrastructure investment, it needs to be followed up with recurrent funding for staffing and service," he said.

Australian Medical Association state president Tony Bartone welcomed state-wide improvements on the percentage of emergency patients treated on time, but said performance was slipping at some under-resourced hospitals, including the Northern, Box Hill, Ballarat and Shepparton.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/thousands-wait-too-long-for-surgery-20141022-11a2uw.html#ixzz3GwEMyNqX

Buy private health insurance.  Then you don't have to wait.

Bam wrote on Oct 23^rd, 2014 at 8:39pm:


Is your health an extravagant luxury?, maybe if we didn't set the health service up to be God, a God that decides sickness will enrich them so that the best course of action is to promote sickness not cure it then maybe there would be no waiting times, let me tell you though the way to more government funding is waiting times, any government agency that has no waiting times will lose funding.

Bam wrote on Oct 23^rd, 2014 at 8:39pm:


Well, not since Labor made it more expensive.

Armchair_Politician wrote on Oct 24^th, 2014 at 9:35am:


Geez Armie, I'm sure you just write this crap even though you really know better. Otherwise, nobody could possibly be that thick. It was indeed the Howard govt that introduced the 30% subsidy. This, along with the activities of the AMA and CoS are the primary causes of escalating health care charges. I'm so glad you're confined to an armchair.