House of Assembly Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1) 55 1 Parliament of South Australia House of Assembly published Question Time Elective Surgery Elective Surgery Mrs HURN House of Assembly Schubert Elective Surgery Mrs HURN (Schubert) (14:39): My question is again to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Have any patients on the overdue elective surgery waitlist experienced any adverse outcomes and, if so, how many? With your leave and that of the house, sir, I will explain. Leave granted. Mrs HURN House of Assembly Schubert Mrs HURN: There are currently 6,019 South Australians overdue for elective surgery which is the worst in South Australia's history. The Hon. C.J. PICTON House of Assembly Kaurna Minister for Health and Wellbeing The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:39): As I said, we are working to increase the number of operations that we are doing and we know that we need to continue to do that to meet the number of patients who are coming on the list. So we acknowledge that there are more and more patients coming on to the list, even as we are doing more elective surgery operations. We need to increase even more the number of surgery operations that we do. Of course, to anybody who is requiring elective surgery, they are triaged by our clinicians. They are triaged in terms of their category of clinical urgency, and there are three different categories; it is a national standard in terms of category 1, 2 or 3. We encourage all patients who are requiring elective surgery to keep in close contact with their general practitioner because their case can be escalated if their clinical condition deteriorates. If there are changes in their clinical condition, then the GP can be in contact with the hospital to make sure that they can get more rapid treatment. Of course, their categorisation may change over that time. Any patient who has concerns, speak to their GP and their GP can speak to the hospital clinicians and can make sure that they are seen in the appropriate timeframe.