But Health Minister Martin Foley has refused to say exactly how many Victorians are now waiting for surgery. The last update at the end of the December quarter said 80,000 people were waiting for treatment. It’s now believed that figure has risen to over 100,000. Mr Foley said the government was still awaiting a report from the Victorian Agency for Health Information — whose reporting period ended on March 31 — to provide the most up-to-date figure. “When they’ve collated all those results, they’ll release them,” he said. Prior to the pandemic, Victoria’s elective surgery wait list was about 50,000. “We know as a result of deferred care, as a result of the pandemic, that (those numbers) are going to increase,” Mr Foley added. Under the bold plan announced on Sunday to fix the state’s health crisis, the Andrews government has committed to boosting surgery levels to new record levels. It has pledged to run at 125 per cent of normal pre-pandemic efforts, meaning 40,000 extra surgeries will be carried out in the next year before it builds up to a record 240,000 surgeries every year in 2024.In a Victorian first, Frankston Private Hospital will be transformed into a public surgery centre with the capacity to treat up to 9000 public patients per year once fully operational in 2023.Two additional state-of-the-art theatres will be built by early next year to boost services at the facility and provide an alternate location for Victorians waiting for their surgery.A $475m investment is set to create more activity in the public system, including more same-day surgeries, increased twilight and after-hours work, and theatre improvements to increase efficiency and fast-track patients through the system.Rapid Access Hubs — which exclusively perform specific surgeries such as hernia repairs, cataract surgeries and joint replacements — will also be established across metropolitan public hospitals to allow surgical theatres, equipment and staffing to be streamlined. The first eight hubs will be established in the next year at St Vincent’s on the Park, Broadmeadows Hospital, Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital, Royal Women’s Hospital, Werribee Mercy Hospital, Sandringham Hospital, the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, and one in regional Victoria. More than $80m will be put towards upskilling more than 1000 nurses and theatre and sterilisation technicians, while an additional 400 perioperative nurses will be trained up. Two thousand more highly skilled healthcare workers will be recruited from overseas.A $20m Surgical Equipment Innovation Fund will also be established to ensure our health services can upgrade surgical equipment and diagnostic machines with the latest technology. Acting Premier James Merlino said the plan ensured every Victorian family was able to get the care they deserve. “The pandemic has been really tough on everyone, but nothing matters more than the health of our loved ones,” Mr Merlino said. “This plan will see record numbers of Victorians get the surgeries they need, while making sure our frontline workforce is supported.”Both Mr Merlino and Mr Foley lashed their federal counterparts for failing to fund half of the state’s hospital costs in the budget. “The Prime Minister said he would pay half the costs for Covid-related care in our hospitals, so our nurses and doctors had what they needed to look after people during the pandemic. Now, he’s cutting $1.5bn out of our health system when patients need it most,” Mr Merlino said. Mr Foley added: “We’re making sure more Victorians get the care they need with a game-changing investment, while the Prime Minister once again fails to show up for Victorians and refuses to go 50/50 on health costs.”Opposition health spokeswoman Georgie Crozier said Victorians couldn’t trust Labor to “fix the healthcare crisis they created”. “Two years ago, Daniel Andrews promised $1.3bn to avoid the exact situation we are now in. Two years later, Labor still won’t say where that money has gone or how bad our healthcare crisis actually is,” Ms Crozier said.“Before Covid, Victoria had the worst funded, lowest staffed and poorest performing emergency departments of any state in the nation. Today’s announcement is too little, too late for a system in crisis.“With Labor, it is always spin and lies before people. Victorians simply cannot trust Daniel Andrews to fix the healthcare crisis he has created.”Peninsula Health director of surgery Peter Evans said doctors were “very concerned” about the hidden waitlist for treatment.“We know that there’s roughly three months of cancer diagnosis that we’re missing, so those patients have not turned up for their screening surveillance because of the pandemic,” A/Prof Evans said.Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation Victorian branch secretary Lisa Fitzpatrick said the plan was “considered”.“This plan, once implemented, will yield more sophisticated and accurate data collection, provide unprecedented coordination by having designated elective surgery hubs and includes workforce expansion and specialisation that is already underway,” she said.“Any who spout blame today are simply proving they don’t understand the health system or the workforce, including what our members have been through and are still experiencing as we move into the third year of the pandemic.”Victorian Healthcare Association CEO Tom Symondson credited the government with developing a “realistic, long-term plan for tackling the enormous elective surgery waiting list”.“In an election year, it would have been tempting to impose a one-off ‘elective surgery blitz’ that risked pushing our exhausted healthcare workers too hard with too many requests for overtime and longer shifts,” Mr Symondson said.“This plan appears to avoid that with its multi-year strategy and more use of private hospitals. The creation of surgical hubs, a recommendation of the VHA, will allow hospitals to deliver more surgery more efficiently and with less chance of cancellation due to emergency surgical cases.”Mr Symondson said the plan also recognised the uneven demand for surgery across healthcare settings given Covid-19 had impacted hospitals differently.
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