QLD’s worst hospital waiting lists revealed

Thousands of patients are waiting so long for surgery doctors fear the backlog will never be cleared. See QLD’s worst offenders.

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 even though it had few Covid cases Queensland still experienced a decline in elective surgery with less urgent Category 3 elective surgeries, including hip and knee replacements, plunging by 19 per cent in 2020 compared to 2018-19.

Emergency Department attendances in Queensland fell 29 per cent in March 2020 but over the full year were 0.6 per cent higher than 2018-19.

In June this year there were 56,745 people waiting for surgery in Queensland and the number waiting longer than recommended had increased by 400 per cent on pre-Covid 2019 (629 people up from 122 in 2019), Queensland’s Hospitals Performance Report shows.

Across the nation 150,000 of the 837,000 patients admitted to public hospital waiting lists in the year to June 2021 were not treated, the report card reveals.

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.

One in five patients who needed Category 3 surgeries waited more than a year.

A staggering 8813 people waiting for elective surgery either died or were unable to be contacted before they had their surgery.

Australian Medical Association president Dr Omar Khorshid wants 6800 more hospital beds 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 nationwide 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.

Emergency Department attendances in Queensland have soared from 513,622 in June 2019 to 601,305 in June 2021.

Nearly one in three emergency patients were not treated within four hours and only 59 per cent of patients arriving by ambulance were admitted to the emergency department within the benchmark 30 minutes.

There were more than 143,000 people waiting to see a specialist in hospital outpatients clinics, the first step before they can even be put on the elective surgery waiting list.

Townsville University Hospital has the longest non urgent surgery wait times. Picture: Supplied

Of the state’s major hospitals, Townsville Hospital had the longest wait times for less urgent Category 3 surgery, with half the patients waiting longer than 347 days, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data shows.

The next worse were the Gold Coast University Hospital, where half the patients waited more than 342 days for surgery and Sunshine Coast Hospital, where 50 per cent of patients waited more than 319 days for surgery.

The Australian Medical Association said public hospitals were in crisis because there were 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.

President of AMA Queensland Prof Chris Perry said there was real cause for concern about the state’s public hospitals’ ability to cope with a major COVID-19 outbreak.

“Our hospitals are running beyond capacity and we need to bring it back to 90 per cent so patients can move through the hospital and don’t sit waiting in our emergency departments with nowhere to go,” he said.

“We need innovative solutions and leadership now across the public and private sectors to proactively manage elective surgeries and access block in hospitals before we reach tipping point.”

Originally published as QLD’s worst hospital waiting lists revealed