Victorian public hospitals have dramatically increased their elective surgery activity this year, cutting waiting times for thousands of people, the latest Health Services Performance Report shows.
Data from the Victorian Agency for Health Information reveals Victorian hospitals performed 46,548 elective surgical procedures between January and March – up 66 per cent from 27,973 operations during the same quarter last year.
VHA CEO Leigh Clarke said this meant hospitals were doing about 517 operations a day on average this year compared to 311 per day during the same quarter last year.
‘Our hospitals are doing more surgery than they did before the pandemic, which is cutting waiting times for care. It’s a great result given we still have a severe health workforce shortage in Victoria. It shows the State Government’s catch up plan is starting to work,’ she said.
Ms Clarke said hospital staff were working extremely hard to speed up elective surgery for the people who need it most with more weekend and after-hours work. Hospitals are also running new surgical hubs, which exclusively perform specific surgeries such as hernia repairs, cataract surgeries and joint replacements, allowing surgical theatres, equipment and staffing to be streamlined. This reduces the chance of cancellation due to emergency surgical cases.
At the end of March, 78,909 people were waiting for elective surgery in Victoria – down 11 per cent from the same period in 2021-22. However, the elective surgery waiting list remains higher than it was before the pandemic when there were about 51,000 people on the waiting list.
The data also revealed a welcome trend towards fewer Victorians needing an ambulance and emergency department care. Compared to the last three months of 2022, there was an eight per cent decrease in people needing a code 1 lights and sirens ambulance and a four per cent drop in presentations to emergency departments.
Ms Clarke said this may be due to fewer people getting very sick with COVID-19, as well as more innovative services to deliver urgent care to people outside of hospitals, such as the Victorian Government’s new priority primary care centres and virtual emergency departments.
‘Overall, this data suggests our health system is slowly starting to recover from an extremely challenging period, but we’re a long way from where we were in 2019,’ she said.
‘We hope to see more support for Victoria’s health system from the Commonwealth Government in the upcoming budget – through the Medicare reforms to support GPs and nurses, and through fairer, 50:50 funding for public hospitals.’
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