Tasmanian government accused of breaking promise to deliver 22,800 elective surgeries in a year
‘Devastating but no surprise’: The Tasmanian government has broken one of its key election promises from the 2021 campaign, according to Greens MP Rosalie Woodruff.
Tasmania
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The Rockliff government has been accused of breaking a key election promise, failing to meet its own target for the number of elective surgeries delivered across the state in the last year.
Premier and Health Minister Jeremy Rockliff told parliament last week that 20,923 surgeries had been performed in Tasmania’s public health system in 2021-22.
The Liberals pledged that 22,800 surgeries would be completed over the 12-month period, meaning there was a shortfall of 2507 procedures.
Greens health spokeswoman Rosalie Woodruff said the government’s failure to honour its commitment was “devastating but no surprise”.
“At the 2021 election the Liberals did their best to fudge the numbers, trying to make their elective surgery policy look bigger and better than it really was,” Dr Woodruff said. “Yet here they are, already well behind the eight ball on a plan that’s barely a year old.”
“This Premier can talk big, but when it comes to real change he’s doing nothing different. Instead of genuinely trying to fix things, he’s shamefully inventing new ways of pretending everything is fine.”
Mr Rockliff said that while the target may not have been met, surgeons, nurses and support staff still delivered the highest volume of surgery to public patients of any year on record in Tasmania and the wait list had reduced by 16 per cent over the course of the year “despite the challenges of Covid”.
“Although slightly fewer procedures were actually delivered, the additional surgical activity that our hospital staff successfully delivered in the last financial year is a significant achievement – especially while safely managing Covid-related impacts in our hospitals,” he said.
Mr Rockliff said the target of 22,800 surgeries in 2021-22 was an “incremental target” for the first year of the plan.
There are currently 9343 patients on the state’s elective surgery waiting list. Of those patients, 1035 are waiting on an urgent procedure, which is more than there were in May 2021 (1007) at the time of the election.
The government released its Statewide Elective Surgery Four-Year Plan in August last year, outlining key performance indicators for the number of surgeries delivered in the state’s public hospitals in each year to 2025.
The performance indicators were revised because of the shortfall in 2021-22. The new targets are 20,600 surgeries to be delivered in 2022-23, 20,225 in 2023-24 and 20,327 in 2024-25.
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Originally published as Tasmanian government accused of breaking promise to deliver 22,800 elective surgeries in a year
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