Hospital targets met

All of West Gippsland Hospital’s category one elective surgery patients had their operations within the targeted 30 days between January and March.

In releasing the hospital’s performance figures for the quarter Member for Eastern Victoria Harriet Shing said more than half were performed within nine days.

Ms Shing said, however, the overall number of people waiting for surgery is expected to rise in coming months due to the pause on nonurgent procedures as hospitals focussed on preparations for dealing with COVID-19 patients.

She said she expected coronavirus to continue to disrupt health services for some months with the impact becoming clearer when data for the April-June quarter is available.

“The elective surgery blitz will resume as soon as it is safe to do so”.

Ms Shing said State government funding had allowed hospitals to prepare and respond to the pandemic by increasing bed capacity, securing intensive care equipment and boosting access to personal protective equipment (PPE).

Statistics for ambulance call-outs and response times in Baw Baw shire also indicated a busy first three months for the year.

Ms Shing said ambulances attended 730 code one emergencies over the period, an increase of 110 on the corresponding period in 2019.

She said 68 per cent of calls were responded to with the 15-minute benchmark with the average response the all call-outs below the target of 15 minutes.