SA Health having trouble keeping up with its own cancellations

SA Health’s website is struggling to keep pace with elective surgery cancellations, as emptying wards of elective patients provides some much-needed relief to clogged EDs.

SA Health’s publicly available list of elective surgery postponements is having trouble keeping up with its own cancellations, listing 76 on Monday when there were in fact 91.

Another 76 were cancelled on Tuesday.

These were on top of the 231 cancellations listed on Friday following the statewide Code Yellow alert putting most elective surgery on pause, bringing the total cancelled since the edict to 398.

Individual hospitals had already started postponing elective surgery before the Code Yellow was issued to relieve pressure on hospital EDs.

This included for patients such as Joe Morrison, 70 who flew over from Port Lincoln for neurosurgery only to have it cancelled three times last week, leaving the pensioner around $800 out of pocket for hotels, taxis and airfares.

SA Health officials said it may take time to reconcile the cancellation data with the website and that Friday’s 231 figure included surgeries scheduled for late this week.

Joe Morrison of Port Lincoln whose neurosurgery at FMC has been repeatedly cancelled.

There are 21,172 people listed as ready for elective surgery including 4131 now overdue.

Meanwhile pressure has eased on emergency departments as bed space is made available in wards.

At 10.30am on Tuesday only Noarlunga Hospital’s ED was on Code White — operating above official capacity — while last week at times every day all metropolitan public hospitals were on Code White.

However, the issue of patients treated but waiting on beds continues to clog EDs, with 102 such patients stuck in EDs on Tuesday morning including 10 who had been waiting for an appropriate place for 24 hours or more.

Respiratory diseases such as flu, Covid, RSV, whooping cough, mycoplasma and the common cold continue to add pressure to the system, which saw ambulance ramping hit a new record in May of 4773 hours.

Ambulances parked at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. Picture: NewsWire / Kelly Barnes

As of Tuesday there were 218 patients in public hospitals with flu or Covid, and 214 SA Health staff off sick with Covid – this is across SA Health’s entire 40,000 workforce, not just frontline clinicians.

SA Health chief executive Dr Robyn Lawrence said the statewide Code Yellow was proving successful in freeing up space for higher priority patients.

“I’d like to thank you all for your continued efforts,” she said in a memo to staff. “We are seeing significant signs of improvement across the system because of it.

“I’ve been encouraged to see out of hospital options being taken up at higher rates than usual. “My Home Hospital is supporting around 40 per cent more patients and the SA Virtual Care Service has seen double the referrals from aged care facilities.

“Through these strategies more than 40 additional patients are receiving safe and rapid community care without the need for a hospital bed.

“There has also been a significant number of regional patients transferred ‘home’ to regional hospitals, allowing them to receive their ongoing care needs closer to their families and support network.”