THE number of elective surgeries performed during 2020-21 increased, as Hunter hospitals worked to clear a backlog left by COVID-19 suspensions the previous year.
Non-urgent elective surgery was suspended nationally in March 2020 to ensure the health system maintained "adequate capacity" to manage the COVID-19 pandemic.
New data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) shows there were 754,600 admissions to hospital from the public elective surgery waiting lists nationally in 2020-21, up from 688,000 admissions in 2019-20.
The data shows that half of all public elective surgery waiting list patients were admitted for their procedures within 48 days - up from 39 days the previous year. The proportion of patients who waited longer than 365 days to be admitted was 7.6 per cent in 2020-21 - up from 2.8 per cent in the previous year.
Non-urgent elective surgery has once again been suspended until February - a move the AMA said was "inevitable" but "avoidable" and would have "profound consequences" for patients.
At John Hunter Hospital, the median wait time for "non-urgent" surgeries rose from 204 days in 2019-20 to 289 days in 2020-21. But the number of these surgeries performed also increased from 2746 to 3041.
An extra 528 "semi-urgent" surgeries were performed at John Hunter Hospital in 2020-21 compared to the year before, with 79 percent of those surgeries completed within the recommended time. Urgent surgeries at the hospital rose to 3214 in 2020-21, with 100 per cent of those done within the recommended time frame.
Of almost 2200 patients waiting for orthopaedic surgery in 2020-21, 20.6 per cent waited longer than 365 days - up from 4.1 per cent the previous year.
Of the people waiting for ear, nose and throat surgery at John Hunter Hospital in 2020-21, 14.4 per cent waited more than a year.
At Kurri Kurri Hospital, more than half of patients waiting for ear, nose and throat surgery waited longer than 365 days - with the average person waiting 379 days for their surgery.
The hospital's overall median wait time for non-urgent surgery rose from 209 to 297, as the number of procedures increased from 1534 to 2702. Of these, 73 per cent of people had their surgeries done within the recommended time.
At Maitland Hospital, people waited an average of 311 days for non-urgent surgery in 2020-21, up from 263 in 2019-20.
The number of non-urgent surgeries also rose from 897 to 1190, with 75 per cent of these completed within the recommended time.
A quarter of patients waiting for orthopaedic surgery at Maitland Hospital waited longer than 365 days in 2020-21. The number of surgeries performed in 2020-21 also increased at Belmont Hospital, where there were 1854 semi-urgent surgeries done - an additional 672 on the year before. Of these, 81 per cent were done within the recommended time frame. All urgent surgeries at the hospital were completed on time, but 6.4 per cent of patients waited longer than 365 days for general surgery, up from 2.1 per cent the previous year, and 10.1 per cent waited longer than 365 days for orthopaedic surgery.
