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Parliamentary Questions


Question Without Notice No. 173 asked in the Legislative Assembly on 2 June 2021 by Ms L. Mettam

Parliament: 41 Session: 1

ELECTIVE SURGERY

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

I refer to the waitlists for elective surgeries. Can the minister confirm that the surgical lists for elective surgeries have been suspended at some hospitals and that some trauma patients are being sent home at others, due to the minister's mismanagement of the health portfolio; and for how long will this continue?

Mr R.H. COOK replied:

I thank the member for the question. I was just wondering whether the member could clarify what she means by a ''trauma patient''?

Ms L. Mettam: In clarification, I understand that some patients with broken bones are being sent home from some hospitals—trauma patients are waiting to be sent back because of bed issues.

Mr R.H. COOK: Being sent home with a broken bone does not necessarily mean that the hospital services are not there to treat you. It is another way that they treat. I know that when I fell off my bike when I was attacked by a stationary fence back in 2017 and I went to the emergency department, I was sent home, in the appropriate way, to then come back and have my operation in due course. Therefore, that is not a sign that the hospital system is in any way not functioning properly.

However, it is true to say that our hospital system is under enormous pressure at the moment. Because of that, we are expecting our health service providers to adapt to this situation to ensure that we can get to those patients who are most acute in time according to their need. The level of demand at the moment is unprecedented. Our ED presentations this quarter alone, compared with the same quarter this time last year, really provide a great illustration of that. At the moment, category 1 patients are up four per cent, category 2 are up over 10 per cent, and category 3 are up over six per cent, compared with the first quarter of 2020. We are seeing a significant increase in the number of patients presenting to our emergency departments. That is being mirrored right across the country—EDs are all suffering from an extraordinary increase in both the number of patients and the acuity of those presentations, and from the level of mental health and other acute conditions presenting. That puts a pressure on all our hospital systems. Our system is moving to cope with this unprecedented level of demand by making sure that we can prioritise those patients who need treatment and care most urgently. That includes working with our elective surgery lists to make sure that we have the beds available for those patients presenting to EDs with acute and urgent needs in relation to their care, and that is what we do all the time.

Last night, the Premier and I met with the director general of health to discuss these issues. We agreed with the director general of health that it is important that we reschedule those people who are category 1 and non-urgent category 2 in order to adapt for the urgent patients who are presenting to our EDs. We want to make sure that those who have urgent and acute needs are met with urgent and acute levels of services. That is why we are making these decisions to ensure that our hospital system continues to adapt. Because of the great work of our hospital system, including a $36 million investment by the McGowan government, we caught up on all those elective surgeries —

Mr P.J. Rundle: You're 10 000 behind.

Mr R.H. COOK: That is just incorrect, member for Roe, and once again you are undermining your own credibility through your interjections.

Through our $36 million investment last year, we have caught up on all those people who had their surgeries rescheduled as a result of the COVID pandemic. We will continue to work with those elective surgery lists to ensure that we can get to those people in good and proper time. That includes the fact that we have the same pre-COVID level of operations taking place and the same number of people in terms of over-boundary that we did prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our hospitals are adapting. They are making all the decisions necessary to ensure that we can get to those patients who are presenting to our EDs with urgent and acute conditions. We are continuing to expand our hospital system. That includes an extra 117 beds, 81 of which have already been brought onstream and the rest will be by August this year. We are recruiting extra nurses. We are also doing recruitment drives, both interstate and internationally, to try to make sure that we continue to grow our medical workforce, which is a major constraint in our system at the moment. Our system is under pressure. We expect our health service providers to adapt to that pressure, and they are making the appropriate decisions of rescheduling non-urgent elective surgery in order to make sure that we get to those most urgent and acute patients who are presenting to our EDs.