Covid-free but West Australian health system at breaking point

WA will postpone about half of its elective surgeries, amid fresh warnings its health system would be overwhelmed in the event of a large outbreak.

Mark Duncan-Smith, at Mount Hospital in Perth, says the West Australian health system would not be able to withstand a large-scale Covid outbreak. Picture: Marie Nirme

Western Australia will postpone about half of its elective surgeries from Wednesday despite its Covid-free status, amid fresh warnings that the state’s health system would be overwhelmed ­almost immediately in the event of a large-scale outbreak.

Perth public hospitals have been advised that some category 2 and 3 elective surgeries will be ­delayed for a month from Wednesday in an attempt to provide relief in a health system that has come under increased pressure even without any Covid-19 in the community.

The decision comes as WA Premier Mark McGowan faces criticism from doctors for underspending on the state’s health system even as other states have bolstered hospital capacity to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mr McGowan on Sunday defended his hard line on relaxing border restrictions, warning that hospitals would be swamped and people would die if the state opened to the rest of the country too early.

But Australian Medical Association state president Mark Duncan-Smith said the need to cancel those surgeries was damning, given the lack of Covid in WA, and warned that the health system would not be able to withstand a large-scale outbreak.

He said doctors had been advised of the looming postponement to some elective surgeries on Friday.

“The public health system in WA is on its knees,” he said. “It’s basically been chronically starved of funds for the last four years, and its capacity to deal with current demand is inadequate.”

Ambulance ramping – a tally of the number of hours patients spend waiting in ambulances for admission into one of the state’s hospitals – has soared this year and is expected to exceed 6000 hours for the month of August. When in opposition, current Health Minister Roger Cook ­described 1030 hours of monthly ramping as a “crisis”.

Dr Duncan-Smith said it would not take much for a Covid outbreak to overwhelm the state’s health system, noting that hospital demand had been increasing steadily well before the pandemic.

“This is not all of a sudden a problem. This is something that’s been brewing over the last four years due to chronic underfunding,” he said.

Ambulance ramping outside Royal Perth Hospital.

Mr McGowan on Sunday ­repeated that he would continue to limit arrivals from infected states even when vaccination rates hit 70 per cent, despite continued pressure from Canberra to open.

“If we bring down the border and allow anyone from NSW in, we will get infections and then we will have to put in place restrictions. We will have our hospitals fill up and if it runs wild, large numbers of people will die,” he said.

A spokeswoman for the WA Department of Health said the decision was made to “improve patient flow” through public hospitals. The health system’s “unprecedented” demand on the health system was being exacerbated by workforce shortages and staff illness.

Opposition health spokeswoman Libby Mettam said the latest elective surgery cancellations were a further sign that the state government had wasted the opportunity to prepare its hospitals for Covid.

“When you look at the pressure that our health workers are feeling right now, without any spread of Covid in the community, when you put that together with the worst ramping rates this month and the fact that we have the lowest vaccination rates in the country, it certainly does raise the question of to what extent has the McGowan Labor government used the benefit of having very little Covid in the community to their advantage,” she said.

WA has previously delayed elective surgeries during the pandemic, but in those instances the decisions were directly linked to community outbreaks of the virus.

All 28 cases in the state are either in hotel quarantine or on-board a cargo ship moored at Fremantle. Twenty-two of the 23 contacts of two infected truck drivers from NSW have all tested negative.

After months of scrutiny around the state of WA’s health system, the McGowan government earlier this month announced an extra $1.9bn in health funding ahead of the upcoming budget. That funding will include the opening of another 332 beds across WA hospitals, although the AMA says that almost double that is needed to bring WA’s per capita bed count in line with the national average.

Ms Mettam said delays in elective surgery would culminate in the presentation of more serious cases, as conditions that go untreated as a result begin to worsen. ‘’

The AMA supports the WA government’s border stand, noting there would be a significant risk to children if border restrictions were lifted when vaccination rates hit targets of 70 to 80 per cent.