The Australian Medical Association has warned Victoria’s elective surgery waitlist may have increased by up to 50% over the past three months, as public hospitals brace for a surge in Covid cases in the coming weeks.
Guardian Australia has revealed elective surgery procedures could be wound back in the state due to staff shortages, with modelling showing Covid cases and hospitalisations from the Omicron subvariant are set to peak this month. The Andrews government this month unveiled a $1.5bn package to help clear the backlog of deferred elective surgery procedures, but the opposition criticised it as “too little too late” for the “healthcare crisis.”
The state’s elective surgery waitlist ballooned during the pandemic, with 80,000 people on the elective surgery waitlist at the end of December. But the most up-to-date figures are yet to be released. The president of the Victorian AMA, Roderick McRae, said he would not be surprised if the waitlist had risen to as high as 120,000.
McRae said the state government should release the latest waitlist figures as a matter of transparency.
“We’re very much in favour of transparency so the good citizens of Victoria have a comprehensive understanding of the circumstances should they require hospitalisation,” he said.
The opposition’s shadow minister for health, Georgie Crozier, said the government should expedite the releasing of the figures so Victorian patients, GPs and surgeons can understand “the extent of the crisis.”
“With such an enormous crisis, surely you must know the numbers. They should be made transparent so that you can plan what to do,” she said.
“Are they going to instigate another code brown? There’s no transparency for what the trigger points are from the government.”
The Greens’ deputy leader and emergency services spokesperson, Ellen Sandell, said pressures in the public hospital system were a result of long-term unaddressed issues by successive Coalition and Labor state governments.
“We need state governments to look at longer-term solutions like investing in more home-based maternity care or smaller family birth centres, looking at how GPs can better work with our hospital system to free up emergency rooms, measures to prevent burnout in nurses and midwives and investing more in preventative health,” she said.
The government has warned there will be a slow decline of Covid cases, with modelling predicting a “long tail” in May due to a range of factors, including more indoor activity as winter approaches. The health minister, Martin Foley, said the Omicron subvariant could result in “several hundred” extra hospitalisations each day.
Victoria’s code brown declaration, designed to reduce pressure on hospitals, ended in February, triggering the easing of restrictions on elective surgery. But it is expected to take years to clear the backlog.
McRae said the elective surgery waitlist was just one part of the picture.
“Within medicine, we’ve frequently discussed a waiting list to get on the waiting list,” he said.
“The patient’s name is only added on to an official waiting list once there has been the referral. As a consequence, people still have to see the primary – usually general – practitioner and then be referred and they get an appointment. And so there’s inherent delays in the system.”
McRae said the delays were not just because of the pandemic but also due to a lack of “reasonable and balanced investment” in its hospital system.
“Our population has doubled, but our hospital capacity has not and the reflection of that is the ambulance ramping outside the emergency department,” he said.
Last month, the state’s ambulance service was forced to enact a “code red” for two hours due to high demand on emergency departments and staff furloughing at hospitals, with just 1% of its paramedics available to respond to emergencies.
The Andrews government has vowed its $1.5bn injection for elective surgery will see the sector operating at 125% of normal pre-pandemic levels by next year. The centrepiece of the funding, to be spread over seven years, will turn Frankston Private hospital into a public surgery facility.
The funding will also create eight rapid access hubs at metropolitan hospitals over the next year that will focus exclusively on specific elective surgeries.
A spokesperson for Foley said the state government had invested in “record levels” of health funding.
“A record number of Victorians will receive elective surgery as part of the Andrews Labor government’s Covid Catch-Up plan – designed to exceed pre-pandemic levels by 25% and get more Victorians the care they need, when they need it.”
