Record is world- class
I WOULD like to respond to your story, “Plastic not fantastic, North Queenslanders waiting longer for cosmetic surgery” ( Townsville Bulletin, 1/ 8).
There are currently no patients in the Townsville Hospital and Health Service waiting longer than clinically recommended for elective surgery.
When we responded to this inquiry in May, the Townsville HHS had performed 6019 elective surgical procedures in the 2017- 18 financial year. All but one of these was done within the clinically recommended times.
Suggestions that North Queenslanders are waiting longer than they should for elective surgery are wrong.
It is also an unfair reflection on the work our clinical staff do in delivering the full range of tertiary, emergency and elective surgeries here at The Townsville Hospital.
In Australia people awaiting elective surgery are assessed by category. Each has a clinically recommended wait time for surgery. These waiting times set the performance benchmark for elective surgery nationally.
The recommended time for category one patients is surgery within 30 days, category two patients within 90 days and category three patients within 365 days.
Much of the data used in the story relates to our performance in the 2016- 17 financial year. During that year we saw all category one patients, 95 per cent of category two patients, and 98 per cent of category three patients within the recommended times.
This data is publicly available and is published in our annual reports.
I’d also like to clarify the claim there have been “delays” to elective surgery. Patients waiting for Category 3 elective surgery are recommended to be seen within 365 days.
Therefore, seeing a patient within this time frame is clinically appropriate: it is not a “delay”. The data used in the story also includes patients who are deemed not ready for surgery.
This includes people who have been offered a date for surgery but decline or are not ready for surgery.
Common examples of this are people on holiday or who have another medical condition that makes the surgery unsuitable or unsafe.
The Townsville HHS has a proven track record in delivering timely, world- class elective surgery to our community. TONY MOONEY AM, Chairman, Townsville Hospital and Health Service.