NSW's elective surgery waiting list has blown out to more than 100,000 patients that will take at least six months to clear | Kaubo
A staggering 10,563 patients were overdue for their elective surgeries on June 30, nearly 20-times the number of overdue patients on the same day in 2019, the latest Bureau of Health Information report shows.
NSW Health Deputy Secretary Susan Pearce said it will take six to nine months before elective surgery waiting lists are back to pre-pandemic levels, but elective surgery programs had been running at 100 per cent activity since July 1, and some hospitals were at 115 per cent activity to clear the backlog.
"We were very serious about the fact that if people urgently needed surgery, they would get it," Ms Pearce said. "We knew once those suspensions were removed we needed to get cracking to get surgeries back up and running," Ms Pearce said. A new partnership agreement between the public healthcare system and private hospitals in response to COVID-19 led to 1294 elective surgery procedures being contracted to private hospitals – roughly 3 per cent of all elective procedures performed in NSW, compared to just 202 over the same period last year.
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