Plan to clear elective surgery waitlist

The NSW opposition has promised a surgical care taskforce to tackle the state’s near-100,000 person waitlist for elective surgeries.

Elective surgeries are classified as medically necessary but non-emergency procedures, which also includes urgent procedures like the removal of malignant skin lesions or congenital heart surgery. Elective surgeries are classified into three categories (urgent, semi-urgent and non-urgent cases), with treatment recommended within 30 days for urgent case.

Opposition Leader Chris Minns said the taskforce would be charged with reducing the elective surgery backlog and ensuring people receive treatment within the clinically established timeframes.

The taskforce will be comprised of clinical, logistics and operations experts, plus past and present public health servants and department representatives.

“After 12 years of Dominic Perrottet and the Liberals, our health system is underresourced, overstretched and overworked and our frontline workers are leaving,” he said.

“It’s why we are seeing wait time blowouts. But Dominic Perrottet says everything is fine. How can you fix a problem you refuse to acknowledge exists?”

Labor health spokesman Ryan Park said elective surgeries were essential for people to “go about their everyday life”.

“It is procedures like knee and hip replacements, cataract removal and for kids things like having their tonsils removed,” he said.

A Bureau of Health Information report released earlier this month elective shows surgery figures between October to December 2022 had yet to recover to pre-Covid levels.

More than 17,000 patients needing elective surgery in NSW waited longer than what was clinically recommended, with 33 per cent of those cases requiring semi-urgent procedures that should have been undertaken within 90 days.