Waiting lists - Good and bad news

The Health Department releases its elective surgical waiting list figures each month and invariably the AMA (WA) is asked for comment. However, interpreting the figures is far from easy; they can be massaged like all statistics.

Additions to the waiting lists are affected by delays in access to surgical out-patient appointments, and the 'wait list' for those appointments is not reported.

Deletions from the list occur not just because patients have had their surgery but because list management aims to ensure patients on the list still require surgery.

Around 5000 patients are admitted from the list each month with a slowly rising trend but this is because nearly 1000 patients a month are now having their surgery under the Ambulatory Surgery Initiative (ABI), where the surgery is funded by the Commonwealth through Medicare.

The good news is the headline number for the total waiting list is falling and more patients are getting the surgery they need. The bad news is that the ASI patients are largely lost to the undergraduate medical students and surgical trainees who need exposure to the common surgical problems that are treated.