The number of patients overdue for elective surgery at the Royal Adelaide Hospital has more than tripled over the past two years, InDaily can reveal.
An SA Health summary of overdue elective surgeries obtained by InDaily shows that 162 patients were overdue for elective surgery at the hospital last month.
Of those patients, 35 were overdue for the most urgent ‘category one’ surgeries – those that must be performed within 30 days.
By comparison, less than 30 patients in total were overdue for elective surgery in April 2013 at the RAH, according to the document.
Patients overdue for elective surgery peaked at nearly 250 in January this year. That is more than six times the number overdue in January 2013.
Overdue elective surgery cases peaked at nearly 250 in January this year.
Most surgical units at the RAH had no overdue patients last month.
However, there are large backlogs at particular surgical units at the RAH.
The vast majority of patients were overdue for plastic surgery (67) and urological surgery including prostate cancer surgery (51) last month.
The majority of patients in the most urgent category – category one – were also in plastics (24) and urology (8).
There were also backlogs of overdue surgeries in ophthalmology (18 patients), retinal surgery (nine patients) and gynaecology (eight patients).
SA Health has a target of zero overdue elective surgeries at the RAH in all categories of urgency each month.
According to the data, however, the only instances during which elective surgery actually dipped to zero were in December and June each year – until last December, when overdue cases had risen to around 175.
InDaily understands the reason for this pattern is that, in the past, the RAH has been required to show that it has no overdue surgeries on its books when they are checked every six months.
This means that patients overdue for surgery in May or November in a particular year have been more likely to receive their surgery than those patients overdue for surgery during, for instance, January or July.
However, a senior SA Health staff member told InDaily that the RAH was made exempt from its six-monthly requirement for December last year, which may explain the lack of a dip in overdue surgeries.
There were nearly 50 patients overdue for the most urgent surgeries in January this year.
The largest spike among patients overdue for elective surgery was in ‘category two’ surgeries.
Only ‘category three’ surgeries showed a drop in overdue patients in December 2014, but rose to more than 35 in March.
An SA Health spokesperson told InDaily in a statement that the RAH was introducing additional theatre lists to help reduce existing overdue elective surgery waiting lists.
“SA Health aims to minimise overdue elective surgery wherever possible however this is often impacted by elements including growth in demand, patient surgery cancellations and the requirement for emergency surgery,” the spokesperson said.
“Transforming Health will introduce three elective surgery hubs for day surgery at Noarlunga, multi-day surgery at The Queen Elizabeth and complex multi-day surgery at the RAH to reduce waiting times and minimise cancellations.”
Health and Community Services Complaints Commissioner Steve Tully said he was concerned by the figures and would follow them up with the State Government.
Tully told InDaily that complaints about long waiting periods for elective surgery in South Australia were “always an issue”, but that the number of complaints on that particular issue was not available to release.
He said he was not aware of any exemption for the RAH from overdue elective surgery targets.
Representatives for the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons were conducting surgeries this morning, and were unavailable for comment, a spokesperson for the organisation said.
Photo: Nat Rogers/InDaily
