Tuesday, 19 March 2024

Elective surgery

Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (18:33): (786) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Health. The action that I seek is for the government to fund a clinical health school at Goulburn Valley Health and also for the minister to clearly articulate what measures the government is putting in place to ensure that the elective surgery backlog is cleared as soon as possible. There are 70,000 Victorians on the waitlist for elective surgery in this state, 70,000 people suffering daily with pain or a lack of mobility as they wait for surgery in one of the state’s hospitals. This is an unacceptable situation, and the government should be doing everything it can to clear the backlog and ensure that Victorians who need surgery can get it within a reasonable time frame.

Each year hospitals sign an agreement with the state government committing to performing a certain number of units of medical treatment. The government then provides the hospitals with funding based on the number of activity units that they expect to complete that year. The Department of Health policy and funding guidelines state that if hospitals do not meet the agreed treatment target, funding is recalled for the activity units that were not performed. The funding recall policy was suspended during COVID, a time when hospitals were in critical need of reliable funding, and it has been reported that the suspension of the funding recall policy is still in effect. Analysis by the Bendigo Advertiser shows that the state’s hospitals were falling short of their targets by the equivalent of 100,000 elective surgeries in the last year. This means hospitals are not meeting their targets for surgeries and other treatments, but they are still getting the money from the government without doing the work. Clearly the backlog is not being created due to a funding shortfall.

Victorians pay the highest tax of any state, and the government has a duty to make sure that taxpayers get value for money. The Victorian community deserves to get the services that its taxes are paying for. Now is not the time to be taking money away from hospitals; however, funding treatments that are not being performed is not sustainable in the long term, and measures need to be put in place to ensure targets can be and are being met.

In my electorate, Goulburn Valley Health missed its target by 13,000 activity units, the equivalent of about 6000 surgeries, but they pointed out that a major reason for this is a significant health worker shortage in our region. That is why I have consistently advocated for a new clinical training school at Goulburn Valley Health. Our health professionals are doing the best they can, but they are overworked and fatigued, and our state desperately needs additional health workers. I urge the minister to put in place a plan to assist hospitals to meet their treatment targets, and that plan must include increased training of health workers and medical professionals. Too many Victorians have been waiting too long for elective surgeries, and the government needs to get serious about clearing the backlog.