Barwon Health expects to wind back elective surgeries due to Covid patients

Barwon Health expects to wind back elective surgeries as it prepares for increased demand from Covid patients.

BARWON Health expects to wind back elective surgeries as it prepares for increased demand from Covid patients.

The health service's chief executive Frances Diver said Barwon Health was continuing to provide elective surgery services, but expected to scale this back in the coming weeks.

“Barwon Health, Epworth and St John of God are continuing to work together

closely to ensure we can meet the needs of the community,” Ms Diver said.

“There are arrangements in place for some Barwon Health public patients to have their surgery in the private hospitals to free up capacity at University Hospital Geelong to treat Covid patients.

“This is being assessed on a case-by-case basis.

“These existing arrangements are expected to be expanded over the coming weeks as demand for ICU and ward beds for Covid patients increase.

“This is likely to result in some non-urgent elective surgery across public and private services being deferred.”

Several Covid patients from Melbourne are being cared for at Geelong hospital.

Ms Diver said all local Covid positive patients would be treated at University Hospital

Geelong, and Covid patients from outside the region requiring care would also be cared for at the hospital.

“Barwon Health is confident that we can scale up to provide additional beds as

needed,” she said.

“The entire public and private health system is working together to ensure additional capacity and staffing is available.

“The evolving situation will continue to be monitored and updated advice will

be provided as required.”

Geelong hospital’s elective surgery waitlist dropped from 2104 patients on March 31 to 1863 on June 30, according to Victorian Agency for Health Information data.

Non-urgent elective surgeries were paused twice in 2020 due to coronavirus.

Health Minister Martin Foley said unlike in 2020, so far, the state government had overwhelmingly kept elective surgery going.

“We’ve always made it clear that as the demand into our health system around increasing numbers of hospitalisations … that we will look at how we partner with different parts of our health system,” Mr Foley said.

“But we’ve always made it clear, that as we see cases of hospitalisation increase, as they are and as they will continue to do, that we will need to make adjustments to particularly non-urgent elective surgery, partnering with the private sector and making sure that dealing safely and sustainably with hospitalisations of Covid patients is our number one priority.

“We’re not going to have our health system overwhelmed and we need to prepare accordingly.”

Originally published as Barwon Health expects to wind back elective surgeries due to Covid patients