ELECTIVE SURGERY
479. Ms L. METTAM to the Minister for Health:
I have a supplementary question. How
can our health system possibly deal with any outbreak of COVID, given the
system is on its knees and cannot even deal with day-to-day issues?
Mr R.H.
COOK replied:
I do not know whether the member for
Vasse was paying attention at the time, but we have had outbreaks before. On those occasions, we calibrated the amount of
elective surgery that was undertaken to meet the demands in relation to COVID. In the middle of last year, for
instance, we cancelled non-urgent category 2 and category 3 elective surgery
for a number of months. Then an investment under the COVID recovery program of
$36 million brought us up to speed. We made
sure that everyone who had their surgeries rescheduled was able to get their
surgery. But we continue to meet a different
sort of challenge. That is the challenge around workforce shortages, a COVID-19
spike in demand and, in particular, that we now have a number of very
long-stay patients who are occupying beds while they wait for National
Disability Insurance Scheme or aged-care assessment team assessments to make
sure that they can move to a different form of care. But we are meeting all
these challenges because we have a first-rate, dedicated healthcare workforce and great leadership in our
hospitals. We will manage these challenges, Madam Speaker. The great pity is
that we have to do it with this continuous negative sniping from the opposition
that is simply there to try to undermine the Western Australian public's
confidence.