Classifieds
January 27, 2022
NSW needs the Commonwealth to pay their fair share for public hospitals
February 12, 2022
AMA (NSW) welcomes the NSW Government’s announcement to move towards the resumption of elective surgery from Monday 7 February but says it does not go far enough.
AMA (NSW) President, Dr Danielle McMullen said while the increase to 75% would be a welcome respite for those waiting for much needed surgery, the State needs a plan for a full return.
“The shutdown of elective surgery has had a significant impact on patients requiring nonurgent but necessary healthcare. We are pleased patients will have access to this care once again; however, we urge the State to give patients certainty that elective surgeries will not be cancelled again as we learn to live with COVID,” Dr McMullen said.
“We’ve experienced three elective surgery shutdowns since the pandemic began. The State cannot continue to use elective surgery as a lever to fix workforce resourcing problems and poor planning.
“We are not through the pandemic yet, and it’s anticipated there could be future waves of infection in winter. We need better planning and better solutions, for our patients’ sake. Suspending elective surgery should only be a last resort and a local decision based on capacity.
“Appropriate funding of general practice to provide alternatives to hospital care should be a priority for State and Federal governments.
“We are facing a significant backlog of elective surgeries and we are pleased that there is capacity in the public hospital system to start this work,” Dr McMullen said.
The latest Bureau of Health Information report released in December found there were 92,276 patients on the waiting list at the end of the third quarter in 2021. New data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) found the proportion of patients on elective surgery waiting lists who waited longer than 365 days to be admitted increased to 7.6% in 2020-21, up from 2.8% the previous year.
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