A four-year strategy aimed at tackling Tasmania's ballooning elective surgery wait lists has been welcomed by stakeholders, as the state government moves away from a planned "blitz" and towards a long-term goal.
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However, concerns remain that a lack of capacity within the health system will result in the cancellation of planned surgeries - and even more disappointment for patients.
Announced by Health Minister Jeremy Rockliff on Tuesday, the plan has a target to reduce the average overdue wait time from 60 days in 2021-22 to 30 days in 2024-25, delivering an additional 22,300 surgeries.
However the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine, who has been outspoken in criticising the government's promise to deliver an elective surgery blitz, has renewed calls for a whole-of system approach to fix a hospital system in "deep crisis".
ACEM Tasmanian faculty chairman Dr Juan Carlos Ascencio-Lane said while the government's plan was focused on addressing wait times, increasing surgeries without further planning and investment would only make other sections of the hospital system worse - and risk "the whole system collapsing".
"ACEM has received reports of cases where elective surgery has been cancelled due to a lack of beds in the hospital system due, in part, to a lack of planning for emergency patients," he said.
"Therefore we reiterate that, in order for there to be any safe and sustainable increase in surgeries, there must be significant and commensurate investment in increasing the in-patient capacity across Tasmania's health system - including smart strategies to bolster the depleted local workforce.
"While we recognise that there was a commitment to recruiting much-needed staff, across Australia we are seeing a shortage of healthcare workers due, in part, to border issues related to COVID-19 so we anticipate difficulties in solving this workforce issue in Tasmania.
"Until these problems are solved, which will take smart solutions, it is uncertain how there could be a safe increase in elective surgeries. We urge the government to work with ACEM to find solutions for these problems."
As of July there were 11,406 Tasmanians on the elective surgery waiting list, including 4325 at the Launceston General Hospital alone.
Responding to the latest plan, the Australian Medical Association Tasmania branch said the term elective surgery was a misnomer for Tasmanians sitting on a waiting list.
In a statement, the peak doctors body said a permanent increase in funding would let the public health sector better plan and resource the management of elective surgery within the state.
"Across the state our public elective surgery lists contain patients that require urgent, semi-urgent and surgery within a year. All these continue to grow in number, and patients are waiting far too long," they said.
"The additional health funding over the next four years is welcome. However, we need to see this investment continue to grow in the future into our public elective surgery program.
"This investment will enable more doctors, nurses, and allied health staff to be employed ongoing in the public system and new beds to be opened to ensure these waiting lists never blow out to this extent again."
The AMA said working through surgery waitlists would not be possible in the public system alone.
"The private sector will be important to help get the waiting list back under control. However, it must not be seen as a permanent solution," they said.
"Our public system trains the surgeons of the future. These doctors in training must be exposed to a variety of operations for teaching purposes.
"The danger with depending on the private system to assist is that they will only take the cheaper, simple procedures leaving the public system with the complex, more complicated to manage patients."
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