Jeremy Rockliff,Minister for Health
Today’s Health Dashboard update demonstrates our commitment to deliver additional elective surgeries is working.
The Dashboard shows the percentage of elective surgery patients seen within clinically recommended times has increased from 44 percent in March 2021 to 55 percent in September 2021.
The average number of overdue days Category 1 patients are waiting has also decreased by 24 percent, from 120 days in March to 91 days in September.
Overall, the waiting list has reduced to 10,776 patients in September down from 12,286 in January 2021.
While there is still work to do, this is very positive news and we will continue to implement our clear plan to reduce the waiting list further,
The September Dashboard also shows demand increases across our health system. To manage this, we have opened more beds and we are continuing to increase available beds in our health system – with 152 new beds coming into our public health system by December 2021.
Emergency Departments in Tasmanian hospitals also continued to experience increasing pressure in September, and we are working with clinicians to look at all options for responding to the rising number of people presenting for care.
On advice from clinicians, medical staffing in the Emergency Department (ED) at the Royal Hobart Hospital (RHH) will increase by at least 15 percent.
This will provide an additional 10.5 FTE of doctors in our Emergency Department at the Royal Hobart Hospital which will help to manage demand, help improve patients being seen on time, and expand our capacity to manage future increasing demand.
We are also establishing the Outpatient Transformation Program to address the increasing demand on outpatient services, including the development of a State-wide Outpatient Plan for Tasmania to complement the State-wide Elective Surgery Four-Year Plan 2021-25.
Encouragingly, data shows Ambulance Tasmania’s response time fell from 14.5 minutes in August to 13.9 minutes in September, despite the number of incidents requiring an ambulance response reaching near-record levels, at 7,463 across September.
We are also addressing the impacts of COVID-19 on oral health, with our $5 million commitment to create an additional 20,000 dental appointments state-wide.
This funding has also secured the purchase of equipment to assist patients seeking treatment for dentures and will provide clients with more efficient services while reducing the waiting time for dentures.
We will continue to work to implement solutions to the challenges in health, to ensure Tasmanian get the right care, in the right place, at the right time.
The Health Dashboard is available at https://www.healthstats.dhhs.tas.gov.au/healthsystem
