Victorian government accused of breaking promise on elective surgeries

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The Victoria state government is being accused of breaking a promise for changing its elective surgery target. It had committed to 240,000 surgeries this year, but the budget reveals it's fallen more than 30,000 short - prompting the government to move the goalposts and aim lower.

Transcript

00:00 Before her elective surgery, Jill Langdon lived in daily pain.

00:07 It's improved my life amazingly.

00:09 The Richmond grandmother had successful shoulder surgery through the private system.

00:14 If she'd gone public, she would have joined a long waiting list.

00:18 Yeah, when I went to see the surgeon, he said it would be a year or two.

00:22 Wait times soared during COVID, so the government committed,

00:26 then doubled down on a target of 240,000 elective surgeries a year.

00:32 That is an ambitious target.

00:34 We're going to hit it?

00:35 There's no doubt about that.

00:36 But there was from doctors who raised those doubts almost a year ago.

00:41 Realistically, I think the targets were aspirational, but not achievable.

00:45 The elective surgery wait list has been slashed from a peak of 80,000 in the pandemic

00:51 to just over 62,000 today.

00:54 We've delivered more planned surgeries than ever before.

00:58 But it's far below the government's own goal.

01:01 The budget reveals the state's on track to carry out 207,000 elective surgeries this year.

01:07 That's 33,000 under target.

01:10 The fifth year in a row, it's fallen short.

01:13 So next year, the government's pulling back with a lower target of 200,000.

01:18 Another broken promise on not being able to meet their own elective surgery targets.

01:23 The budget blames high demand in emergency and workforce challenges.

01:28 We're still not able to access the workforce that we need.

01:33 We're in a global war for talent when it comes to getting health care workers.

01:37 The workforce shortages have been known about for a long time.

01:41 The government is offering 10,000 nursing and midwifery scholarships to boost the supply pipeline.

01:48 And it's allocated $8.8 billion for hospital investment in the budget,

01:53 including $1.6 billion for infrastructure upgrades.

01:58 Today, the government revealed designs for Austin Hospital's $275 million expansion,

02:04 part of its effort to restore the system back to full health.

02:08 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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