A “tsunami of people” is awaiting elective surgery due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in which the body of top doctors says it is an “invisible tragedy.”
Key points:
- The wait for cataract surgery went from 98 days in the first year of the pandemic to 172 days in 2020-2021
- NSW and Tasmania had the longest waiting times for most procedures
- The AMA calls for a post-disaster plan
Repeated blockades and bans on elective surgery during the pandemic have forced hundreds of thousands of people to wait even longer for life-changing treatments and can sometimes save lives.
State governments manage public hospital waiting lists and have called on the federal government to increase its share of public hospital funding to address pandemic-related delays.
Chris Moy, vice president of the Australian Medical Association (AMA), said the elective surgery waiting lists were an “unseen tragedy” of the pandemic.
“Elective surgery makes it sound inflexible, the reality is that more elective surgery is essential,” Dr. Moy said.
“We’re talking about a tsunami of people who have had delayed care who really need it now.
“This is a real unseen tragedy that has occurred during the pandemic, which is not counted in the numbers.
“We have to come up with a plan to move forward, a recovery plan after a disaster, which is the kind of thinking we have after every forest fire.”
Mr. Schaap has been waiting for surgery for more than a year to relieve some of the symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome. (ABC News: Phoebe Bowden)
Eddy Schaap has been waiting for surgery for more than a year to relieve the tingling and stabbing pain he feels in his left arm from carpal tunnel syndrome.
“I will take painkillers,” the 73-year-old said.
“If the waiting time were reduced to three, four or five months, it would be much more acceptable.”
Mr. Schaap continues to work as a manual, but the pain makes it very difficult.
“When I work, the pain is there, the discomfort, the tingling is there, practically from the shoulder down,” he said.
“I imagine a lot of people couldn’t get over it because the pain was too intense.”
Waiting times deteriorated significantly during the first year of the pandemic, according to the latest data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
Doctors, health workers and patient advocates say the situation has worsened since then, and waiting times have increased even more.
“Over the last few weeks, we’ve had so many worrying phone calls,” said Stephen Mason, executive director of the Patients Association of Australia.
“Across Australia, hospitals have problems, waiting times have faded.”
It means patients run the risk of waiting longer for procedures, such as joint replacements and heart surgery.
The most recent national data from the first year of the pandemic (2020-2021) show that waiting times have increased for almost all surgical procedures.
The average time it took a patient to access cataract surgery went from 98 days in 2019-2020 to 172 days in 2020-2021.
The place where a patient lives also affects the likelihood of accessing timely care.
For hip replacement surgery during the first year of the pandemic, the typical waiting time was 328 days in Tasmania and 271 days in NSW.
Waiting times were much better in Victoria (119 days) and Western Australia (124 days), according to data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
NSW and Tasmania recorded the worst waiting times for most procedures.
Some states and territories have promised money to address the problem.
In April this year, Victoria spent $ 1.5 billion to reduce elective surgery waiting times.
But last week, Victoria announced she would join states like Queensland to suspend elective surgery, as hospitals struggled with staff shortages and an increase in patients.
“People think about the number of deaths from COVID, but we should really take into account the number of deaths from delayed care, such as delayed elective surgery, and also the increase in suffering caused by that,” he said. Dr. Moy.