Bed shortage hits public hospitals in Adelaide in 2021; wait for elective non-urgent surgery down but years, months

The wait for some elective surgeries in Adelaide public hospitals varied from months to years.

Some elective surgeries were rescheduled in June 2021 as South Australia's health system battled surging demand that triggered a major incident alert at the Royal Adelaide Hospital.

The state government’s SA Health department chief executive Chris McGowan sent out a letter to staff, saying tpatients were being referred to other medical centres — including some private hospitals — to urgently create spare bed capacity. Patients with the most urgent needs were being prioritised, and that measures included "rescheduling non-urgent elective surgery, and maximising the use of … our capacity in the private system".  Extra bed capacity also was sought at peri-urban hospitals beyond Adelaide's urban fringe, including at Mount Barker, Gawler and Victor Harbor.

A month earlier, after a similar situation was declared at the Flinders Medical Centre because of overcrowding.

Another memo sent to staff of the Central Adelaide Local Health Network, including Royal Adelaide Hospital, declared a "major incident alert across our network because of major demand pressure. A network incident command centre was set up to coordinate and deploy resources to get beds for emergency patients.

SA Health figures for late 2020 showed patients were waiting up to 10 years to see a specialist in the state’s public health system, to get on the list for elective non-urgent surgery. But waiting times varied according to different hospitals. The longest maximum wait time to see an ophthalmology specialist was 119 months at Flinders Medical Centre. The maximum wait for the same service at Modbury Hospital was 56 months.

People were waiting up to 115 months to see a urology specialist at Flinders, while that had dropped to 30 months at Modbury and 56 months at the Lyell McEwin Hospital. On the flip side, Flinders had a six-month maximum wait to see a cardiology specialist, compared with more than 60 months at the Royal Adelaide and Queen Elizabeth hospitals. The maximum wait times across all medical disciplines were as long as 16 years in 2018, pointing to some improvements over the past two years.

People with private health insurance, or those who choose to pay for treatment themselves, face a wait of just days or weeks for a consultation. There was no waiting for some public appointments, such as medical oncology.

SA Health chief medical officer Dr Michael Cusack, who has made tackling waiting lists a priority, said steady improvements were being made by all local health networks. These included an  audit to see if people still on waiting lists should be taken off them, and more links to GP doctors  so people are not coming back for unnecessary repeat specialist consultations.