Australia’s worst hospital waiting lists

Thousands of patients are waiting so long for surgery doctors fear the backlog will never be cleared. See the worst offenders in our full list.

Exclusive: Covid’s devastating toll on public hospitals means thousands of patients are waiting so long for surgery doctors fear the backlog will never be cleared unless more hospital beds are funded.

A new report card released by the Australian Medical Association shows Australia’s public hospitals carried out nearly 10 per cent (9.2 per cent) fewer elective surgeries in 2019-2020 overall.

But the number of less urgent operations, like hip and knee replacements, suffered an even greater drop of 18.4 per cent compared to 2018-19 as a result of a one-month Covid ban on surgeries.

Across the nation, 150,000 of the 837,000 patients admitted to public hospital waiting lists in the year to June 2020 were not treated, the report card reveals.

This included 8813 people waiting for elective surgery, who either died or were unable to be contacted.

Nearly 22,000 people as many chose to seek treatment elsewhere.

One in four Category 2 patients — which includes people needing cancer investigations, heart valve replacements, craniotomies for unruptured brain clots — were not treated within the recommended 90 day time frame.

And nearly 20,000 patients waited more than a year for their surgery.

Australian Medical Association president Dr Omar Khorshid. Picture: Supplied

AMA president Dr Omar Khorshid said governments needed to “build up the long-term capacity of the public hospital system so that it is fit for purpose as it faces a vastly different environment that the pandemic has created”.

An extra 6850 public hospital beds were required nation-wide by 2024-25 just to maintain the current, lowest in 27 years, ratio of beds to those 65 years and older and federal government funding had to be lifted to 50 per cent of public hospital costs, he said.

“The human cost of delayed treatment is real and patients were already waiting, in some cases, years to access care well before this pandemic started,” he said.

Despite having fewer patients to deal with, emergency department (ED) performance also declined overall nationally with almost one in three patients not treated within four hours.

“So, if you’re in an ED in Victoria, the ACT, Tasmania, South Australia, Northern Territory it’s more likely you’ll still be there after four hours than if you were in WA, NSW or QLD,” Dr Khorshid said.

The Australian Medical Association said a key problem was bed block — there are not enough beds available on hospital wards to admit the patients arriving at emergency departments.

Those aged over 65 are responsible for 40 per cent of public hospital activity.

However, the number of beds for every 1000 people in this aged group has been declining for 27 years.

Covid surgery bans saw elective surgery waiting lists boom. Picture Johnny Greig / News Corp

More recent data shows Tasmania has one of the worst elective surgery records in the nation, with some people waiting more than 642 days for less urgent Category 3 surgery like hip and knee replacements.

At Royal Adelaide Hospital in South Australia half of all Category 3 patients waited more than 355 days for surgery.

NSW hospitals staged a major turnaround, cutting its surgery waiting list from more than 100,000 in June 2020 back to 85,000 in June 2021, by contracting out work to private hospitals.

Victoria, which has been hardest hit by Covid, saw its waiting lists balloon by more than 10,900 people to 66,706 in June 2021.

Dr Khorshid said the situation was intolerable and in the absence of additional funding and deep system reform, it would only get worse.

“We need to remind ourselves that behind these figures are people. People who can’t work, who are in pain, who need treatment to get their lives and their health back. Many of us may be leaving lockdown, but those waiting for surgery will continue to be locked out of timely treatment,” he said.

Originally published as Australia’s worst hospital waiting lists