The surgeries of 70 patients on the Sunshine Coast have been postponed — and could be delayed further — as the region braces for the peak of the Omicron wave expected next week.
Non-urgent elective surgeries were put on hold in January until March 1 across Queensland to help hospitals cope with the expected surge in COVID admissions.
That equated to 70 patients who had been expecting to have surgery through Sunshine Coast University Hospital and Health Service (SCHHS) being told the “distressing” news that it wouldn’t be going ahead yet.
The surgeries have not been rescheduled, but a hospital spokesperson said they would be given a new date “as soon as we can”.
“We know that postponing elective surgery can be distressing for our patients which is why we’ve tried our best to limit these,” the spokesperson said.
“We will reschedule these appointments as soon as we possibly can but we acknowledge there may be delays.
“We will be partnering with our private hospital colleagues to reduce these wait times and provide access to elective surgery services in the months to come.”
The top three ‘non-urgent’ (Category 3) procedures that have been postponed are ear, nose throat, general surgery and orthopaedic.
Sunshine Coast News has previously reported on a surgery backlog at SCHHS which has left patients languishing on the waiting list for years, despite being in extreme pain on a daily basis.
Some ended up seeking rapid treatment in Brisbane where surgeons said they should not have been placed on a waiting list.
There were 3782 patients on the waiting list for elective surgery on the Coast in the most recently released data for the September quarter.
That included 378 patients in the most urgent category 1.
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Health minister Yvette D’Ath said postponing non-urgent elective surgeries was necessary to ensure access urgent and critical healthcare.
She said the situation would be reviewed at the end of January to determine if elective surgeries could be resumed earlier than planned.
Queensland’s Chief Health Officer Dr John Gerrard said the state’s hospitals were “bearing up” to the COVID-19 outbreak which hadn’t peaked as steeply as authorities expected.
Dr Gerrard said there were 879 people being treated in hospital for COVID-19 and another 50 patients in intensive care with 12 of those on a ventilator.
On Monday there were 60 patients with COVID in hospital on the Sunshine Coast (three of them in ICU), and 786 in the virtual ward.
Dr Gerrard said Queensland wasn’t having a “very tall peak” like NSW or Victoria, with hospitalisations far lower than the thousands expected.
“Queensland hospitals are bearing up, but we’ll see in the next seven days, particularly as metropolitan Brisbane peaks, just exactly what happens there,” Dr Gerrard told reporters on Monday.
“So far the impact of the epidemic is less than we expected, so far in this wave, but … I’m trying to be cautious here because we still haven’t reached a peak here in Brisbane.”
