Elective Surgery

The Hon. T.J. STEPHENS (14:51): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Will the minister update the council on government efforts to reduce overdue elective surgery?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:52): I thank the honourable member for his question. The Marshall Liberal team was elected to government in March 2018 with a strong plan and detailed policies to get South Australia back on track after 16 years of Labor mismanagement. Our policies included commitments to drive down overdue elective surgery numbers and ensure South Australians who have received a positive faecal occult blood test result have access to a colonoscopy within the clinically recommended time frame.

When we came to government in March 2018, there were more than 1,700 overdue elective surgery operations in our public hospital system. The Marshall Liberal government's first budget, handed down on 4 September 2018, included $40 million over two years to reduce overdue elective surgery numbers. Over the next 18 months an extraordinary amount of work was undertaken to drive down the overdue elective surgery numbers.

That work included establishing a patient services panel to support patients where surgery was overdue to get the operation or procedure they required from a private provider at no cost to the patient. In the first two years after the Patient Services Panel was established, it enabled more than 5,600 overdue patients to have the surgery and procedures they needed to get off the overdue waiting list and get on with their lives.

When the Marshall Liberal team set its shoulder to the task, no-one had heard of COVID-19 and SA Health had not turned its collective mind to how to manage elective surgery during a global pandemic. On 31 March, almost two months after the first case of COVID-19 in this state, the State Coordinator, consistent with a determination of national cabinet, restricted non-urgent elective surgery. At that stage, the number of South Australians on the overdue elective surgery waiting list had fallen to 782. Percentage-wise, in our first three years in government we had slashed the overdue waiting list by more than 55 per cent.

Just two months later, however, the impact of the COVID-19 shutdown of elective surgery on our public health sector had seen that number skyrocket to an unprecedented 2,781; or, to put it another way, in two short months last year our overdue elective surgery numbers increased by 350 per cent. While South Australia was able to drive down that number in subsequent months, the Parafield cluster in November and the statewide shutdown disrupted those efforts yet again.

In recent months and weeks, the numbers have been trending downwards. As of yesterday, there were still 1,531 patients whose elective surgery was overdue. It's less than the number of overdue patients we inherited from Labor when we came to government, but we still have not fully recovered from the impact of COVID-19 on elective surgery patterns.

Facing that reality, to continue the recovery in elective surgery, to continue the good work that we have started, the Marshall Liberal government in yesterday's budget allocated an additional $20 million in the financial year 2021 to undertake elective surgery and colonoscopies—$20 million to ensure everyday Australians are able to get the care they need as quickly as possible and to support our hospitals and clinicians in these uncertain times.