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Parliamentary Questions


Question Without Notice No. 13 asked in the Legislative Assembly on 15 February 2022 by Ms L. Mettam

Parliament: 41 Session: 1

CORONAVIRUS — ELECTIVE SURGERY

13. Ms L. METTAM to the Minister for Health:

I refer to the minister's pre-emptive cancellation of elective surgery at a time when Western Australian hospitals were dealing with a single COVID-19 patient, which has impacted people such as grandmother Michelle Hansford, who has been waiting for more than three years for important reconstructive surgery. Is this not an admission that this government has failed to prepare the WA health system for COVID?

Ms A. SANDERSON replied:

The member for Vasse, the opposition spokesperson on health, has clearly failed to read any of the detail, and as usual has totally misrepresented the approach and what has happened. It is not a cancellation of elective surgery. What we saw when hospitals were overwhelmed in the eastern states was a last-minute scramble to cancel people's surgeries. In Western Australia we have prepared and we are taking a sensible and orderly approach to what we expect will be the surge in our hospitals, and that is to give notice to people; it is not to cancel their elective surgery. There will be a period of scaling down during which bookings will not be put in place for category 3 and 2 surgeries only, and some category 2s will continue. It is a planned scaling down of non-urgent elective surgery. All urgent surgery will continue to occur.

We put that date in place to give hospitals notice, and we gave the private sector notice that we would also put this in place for that sector in the following week. We have seen really strong management of this disease. The slowing down of the spread is working, and that is a good thing. The slowing down of the spread in the community is working. Therefore, we have been able to push that out for another two weeks, so we will continue to book people in to have their elective surgery. No-one has had their surgery cancelled due to COVID, unlike what we have seen in the eastern states.

I know that the member for Vasse likes to quote the Australian Medical Association regularly, but she failed to quote it on this issue. The AMA described the decision as a sensible approach, because it gives hospitals the opportunity to plan and it gives the government the opportunity to plan for the workforce when there is a surge. That is a sensible approach; that is a good approach. That is called using the time wisely, which is exactly what the opposition has been calling for for the last two years.