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Parliamentary Questions


Question Without Notice No. 479 asked in the Legislative Assembly on 7 September 2021 by Ms L. Mettam

Parliament: 41 Session: 1

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.