Waiting times for surgery at public hospital at the highest level

Hospital waiting lists are at a crisis point — people are dying while others forced to wait years for urgent surgery. Use our tool to find out how your hospital performs and how to beat the wait.

A Victorian man with an excruciating shoulder injury was forced to wait eight months just to see a public hospital specialist, as doctors warn of “hidden” waiting lists that are hurting patients.

It took 18 months after David Carr was referred for surgery to have a specialist agree to operate, with the 57-year-old then waiting another six months before his shoulder was repaired in March.

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He said the delay was “so frustrating” but that he was told it was “within the guidelines” because the waiting list clock was not triggered until a patient’s first appointment with a specialist.

“Bureaucrats tell you it’s not two years you’ve been waiting, they only count the last six months,” Mr Carr said.

A Herald Sun analysis of national hospital waiting times found a 48 per cent blowout for patients needing elective surgery, with thousands dying before they are operated on.

Waiting times for elective surgery in Australian public hospitals are now at the highest level since records began in 2001-02 with half of all patients waiting at least 40 days for treatment, up from 27 days sixteen years ago.

Victorian hospitals have performed much better than other states, with half of all patients waiting at least 28 days for surgery in 2001-02, compared to 29 days in 2017-18.

But waiting lists vary substantially between Victorian hospitals, such as:

- Western Hospital has wait times of over 241 days for hip replacements while Box Hill Hospital has wait times of 47 days.

- Half of all patients wait 224 days for a tonsillectomy at Sunshine Hospital while at Bendigo Hospital the wait is just 13 days.

- At Royal Melbourne Hospital half of all patients wait 146 days for cataract surgery while the West Gippsland Healthcare Group has no wait.

A report card by the Australian Medical Association shows one million people requiring urgent surgery in public hospitals across the country were waiting longer than clinically recommended.

NSW AMA president Dr Kean-Seng Lim said official data did not even properly measure waiting times because the clock did not start until a patient first got an appointment with a specialist at a hospital.

David Carr, waited over 2 years to get his shoulder surgery and had to live on a cocktail of painkillers. Picture: Nicki Connolly

Hospital spending has opened up as a major election battleground with Labor offering a $2.8 billion Better Hospitals Fund and promising to lift federal public funding from 45 to 50 per cent of public hospital budgets, along with $250 million to cut waiting lists for other procedures.

The Coalition is promising to cover 45 per cent of public hospital budgets and will fund a $1.25 billion Community Health and Hospitals Program to help patients with a range of illnesses.

AMA president Tony Bartone said waiting lists were so dire because hospitals were not getting enough funding to cope with increasing demand.

But Australian Health and Hospitals Association chief Alison Vehoeven said money alone would not solve the problem unless it was tied to states meeting targets to reduce waiting times.

NSW AMA president Dr Kean-Seng Lim said official data did not even properly measure waiting times because the clock did not start until a patient first got an appointment with a specialist at a hospital.