More than 1400 patients were waiting for elective surgery at Dubbo Hospital at the end of March, despite a significant boost in efficiency in the January to March quarter.
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The figures have published in the NSW Bureau of Health Information’s Healthcare Quarterly report, which showed a 17 per cent increase in the number of patients (872) who received elective surgery compared with the first quarter of 2017 (743).
That jump included a 56.6 per cent increase in the number of urgent patients who received elective surgery.
The figures include the first patients to benefit from the new $18 million surgical unit that was officially opened in March.
Despite the jump in numbers – 119 urgent patients (up from 76 in the same period of 2017), 241 semi-urgent (up from 181) and 438 non-urgent (up from 401) – waiting times remained stable when compared to the January to March quarter of 2017.
For the most common procedures, median wait times decreased for: cataract extraction (155 patients: 293 days, compared to 337 in 2017); total knee replacement (48 patients: 270 days down from 345); total hip replacement (37: 246 days down from 314); cholecystectomy (26: 49 days down from 200), and; inguinal herniorrhaphy (24: 157 days down from 323).
The median wait time for hysteroscopy (38 patients) remained steady at 54 days, while cystoscopy patients (61) were waiting slightly longer (25 days, up from 18). 28 tonsillectomy patients had the longest median wait time at 297 days, up from 278 in the first quarter of 2017.
In total, 100 per cent of urgent patients were seen within the clinically recommended time frame of 30 days, 98.3 per cent of semi-urgent patients were seen within 90 days and 99.5 per cent of non-urgent patients were seen within 365 days.
Meanwhile across NSW, more than 52,000 elective surgery procedures were performed, an increase of 1.7 per cent compared with the same quarter of 2017.
Across NSW, median waiting times for elective surgery were 10 days for urgent procedures (unchanged), 47 days for semi-urgent procedures (up one day) and 226 days for non-urgent procedures (up five days).
At Dubbo, median wait times were longer than the state average: 16 days for urgent procedures (up two days compared with the same period of 2017), 50 days for semi-urgent (up two days) and 286 days for non-urgent (up 19 days).