SA Health and private hospital elective surgery to gradually resume from Feb 7
A date has been set for the resumption of elective surgery, after it was suspended for a month to allow the health system to deal with the Omicron Covid-19 wave.
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Elective surgery is set to gradually resume after being suspended for almost a month as the health system recovers from the Omicron Covid-19 wave.
On the two year anniversary of the pandemic in South Australia, the state’s Covid-19 authorities agreed to resume some non-emergency surgery in a staged approach over the next month from Monday.
Based on updated SA Health advice, the Covid Ready Committee, chaired by Premier Steven Marshall, recommended operations can first resume at private and 29 regional hospitals, subject to local outbreaks.
In a fortnight, day surgery will be performed again across Adelaide’s eight public hospitals along with 75 per cent of operations in the private sector.
From the following Monday, February 21, all private hospital elective surgery can resume along with all public category 2 surgery, or procedures clinically due within 90 days.
All surgery, including category three procedures that must occur within 365 days, is permitted by the end of the month.
Elective surgery for children started again from 12.01am last Saturday, just hours after it was publicly announced.
Senior government sources said the staged approach was agreed after clinicians complained that not enough time was given for when the paediatric surgery relaunch was announced.
Mr Marshall said the decision had been made as the number of Covid patients recovering in hospital fell, along with the number of SA Health staff in isolation or sick.
“We know that for many people, elective surgery is not particularly elective, with many South Australians needing their procedure sooner rather than later,” he said.
Police Commissioner Grant Stevens, as state Covid-19 co-ordinator, will now authorise new legal directions under Emergency Management laws.
Chief Medical Officer, Dr Michael Cusack, said priority had been to care for Covid patients while trying to boost vaccination rates.
“We will closely monitor the rates of … transmission in the community … and remain Covid-ready if the situation changes in the future,” he said.
The state government had banned all non-urgent elective procedures across public and private hospitals from midnight on January 4 to free up resources as it faced the Omicron wave.
Some non-Covid patients were sent to private hospitals while staff were sent to vaccination clinics to help boost the number of beds.
Overdue elective surgeries in the public hospital system have surged to almost 1400 procedures in the past month.
Latest SA Health data shows 20,291 operations on its elective surgery database, 3,457 of which are classed as overdue.
Earlier, Mr Marshall announced three new Covid-related deaths along with 1266 cases in the past 24 hours.
SA Health later revealed the fatalities included a man in his 80s and a woman and male in their 90s.
A reconfiguration of data located 214 extra cases. There are 22 cases in intensive care, while five patients are on ventilators in an induced coma.
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