Elective surgery wait time surges
A surge in WA patients waiting too long for urgent elective surgery last month has been blamed on the opening of the Fiona Stanley Hospital.
New waiting list figures from the WA Health Department show 104 category 1 patients were waiting beyond the medically recommended maximum 30 days, compared with the average 16 a month for the past two years.
The State Government has a target that no category 1 patient should wait more than 30 days.
The number of over-boundary category 2 patients, who are not meant to wait more than 90 days, has also blown out this year, with about 1000 patients - or one-fifth of all category 2 cases - waiting too long for operations.
There were also 270 category 3 patients waiting longer than the recommended maximum of 12 months - the most in at least two years.
Overall, 17,918 people were on the surgery list, with an average waiting time of 2.07 months, up from 1.71 months a year ago.
Some of the longest waits were for people needing ear, nose and throat surgery, such as having tonsils out, and knee replacements.
The department blamed the fall in elective surgery performance in the first quarter on reconfiguring metropolitan hospitals to allow for the opening of Fiona Stanley Hospital.
It said January was also traditionally a lower performing month because many staff were on leave and theatres were often upgraded.
Shadow health minister Roger Cook said the average waiting times were significantly higher than last year, but most concerning was the number of people waiting longer than clinically appropriate.
"The Government has to make real improvement on these lists, and it's not good enough to continue to blame the reconfiguration of the South Metropolitan Health Service for these blowouts," Mr Cook said.
But Health Minister Kim Hames said it was inevitable that wait times would go up with the hospital changes.
"Elective surgery performance has already started to improve and this improvement should be reflected in the next quarter's performance," Dr Hames said.
"The important thing is WA is still performing well and is second best in wait times for elective surgery in Australia."
