Snap public holiday throws elective surgery ‘into chaos’

AMA president Steve Robson says some states and territories may have no choice but to cancel public elective surgeries next Thursday.

AMA President Steve Robson.

Australian Medical Association president Steve Robson says some states and territories may have no choice but to cancel public elective surgeries next Thursday, with Anthony Albanese playing down the impact on the health sector from the snap public holiday to commemorate the life of Queen Elizabeth II.

Professor Robson said the health sector was in chaos trying to deal with the ramifications of the public holiday announcement, with some jurisdictions likely to cancel all elective surgeries in public hospitals.

Senior doctors in Western Australia have told The Australian it was likely public elective surgeries would be cancelled in the state next Thursday, although a final decision had not been made.

There are about 33,000 people on a waiting list for elective surgery in Western Australia, with the public holiday adding pressure to the state’s health system.

“If you can’t provide staff, you can’t do the operation,” Professor Robson said. “It’s not so much a choice as the practicality of actually getting the bodies on the ground to admit patients into hospital, assistants to clean the operating theatre, move patients in and out of the operating theatre.

“I’m concerned there won’t be an orderly who can actually push the patient up to theatre, an admin clerk that can admit and get the paperwork done, a nurse to see them and send them home.

“That is all the staff that has to be in place for an operation.”

Responding to concerns from the health sector, the Prime Minister said issues could be worked through with “common sense”.

“This is a one-in-70-year event and I’m sure that these issues, with a bit of common sense, can be worked through,” Mr Albanese said.

“If someone needs chemotherapy on that day, of course they should receive it.”

Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists president Sanjay Jeganathan said Covid had put “ongoing pressure” on oncologists to treat cancer patients in a timely manner.

“As specialists, our members (clinical radiologists and radiation oncologists) will do all that they can so patients are not impacted by the one-day public holiday,” Associate Professor Jeganathan said. “It would be up to each hospital, clinic, cancer centre to manage this at a local level with amended schedules and staff rosters.”

Professor Robson said Mr Albanese’s call for chemotherapy procedures to go ahead showed a lack of understanding of “what is involved in providing healthcare”.

“You need admin staff to check you in, you need nurses to put you in, you need doctors to do it,” he said.

“So who decides whose chemo is more important than someone’s chest X-ray?

“I agree completely that if you need chemo then it is great for you to get it. But you have got to be able to provide a service for it to be given.

“And if you can’t get staff, because if all the nurses are home because the kids aren’t in school that day, how do you manage it?”

Professor Robson said the snap holiday has thrown “extra strain on the health system at a time we really don’t need it”.

“And it’s left literally tens of thousands of patients around the country uncertain as to whether their procedures will go ahead,” he said.