Surgery backlog ‘here to stay’

Surgeries are being delayed as hospitals grapple with staffing shortages and high demand – and there is no end in sight, a health leader says.

One of the worst was Waikato Hospital, where 100 surgeries – meant to be performed in June – were put off and 318 procedures were outsourced.

This was despite fewer surgeries scheduled to begin with – with 279 less than the number done in June last year.

And it was going to be impossible to catch back up, New Zealand Association of General Surgeons president Dr Rowan French said.

‘‘We haven’t got the ability to catch up [this time],’’ he said.

‘‘The acute need for services will come right in a couple of months, but those underlying [staff] deficits will still be there.’’

Normally staff could schedule surgeries after hours or on Saturdays to catch up, but there were no nurses or technicians for that to be possible.

‘‘Most people are down between 20 and 45% depending on the hospital and the speciality.’’

There were some pockets in the country that were doing okay, but Waikato was at the bottom of that list, he said.

Obviously urgent and acute care had to be prioritised, with cancer and cardiac surgeries next on the list, he said.

‘‘Those are being prioritised and for the most part they aren’t too far behind.

‘‘But, in saying that, there have been some cancellations.’’

He said long cancer surgeries, that exceeded eight hours, were sometimes being cancelled due to the lack of theatre nurses.

The issues with the system was not about money or funding any more, he said.

It was a human resourcing problem.

French said staff were burntout and leaving the industry or jumping the ditch to earn more money in Australia.

‘‘We are losing staff rapidly.’’ French said there was a particular shortage of nursing staff and anaesthetic technicians, who were crucial to ongoing surgeries.

There were 721 procedures in June this year, compared to the pre Covid-19 number of 1007 in 2019, a Te Whatu Ora Waikato spokesperson said.

‘‘The 721 elective procedures were a combination of cancer and time critical cases who required an inpatient stay, and we have continued with some day procedures such as Ophthalmology (eye disorders).’’

Waikato Hospital was reviewing resource levels daily, but due to ongoing high demand for acute and urgent care, it was not scheduling high numbers of elective procedures, Te Whatu Ora Waikato interim district codirector Chris Lowry said.

Some surgeries were being outsourced to the private sector, and there was a ‘‘recovery plan’’ for catching up on procedures that have been deferred. A briefing for Waikato Hospital staff said its operating level had been increased to ‘‘red status’’ due to the significant impacts of illness.

‘‘We are very aware of the impact the postponement of planned care and deferment of non-urgent functions has on our patients, however this does enable us to free up capacity to assist with meeting the demand on urgent and acute services and redeploy staff to where they are most needed,’’ the email said.