A new report has revealed that Australia’s elective surgery numbers fell to the lowest level since 2010 and nearly 40 percent of patients were forced to wait more than four hours in an emergency department due to COVID-19.
Adrian Webster, a spokesperson for the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), said that public hospitals performed 623,000 elective surgeries in 2021-22.
This is 131,600 fewer or a 17 percent drop in surgeries compared to the previous year.
“In the five years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, presentations to public hospital emergency departments steadily increased by an average of 3.2 percent per year. However, the pandemic continued to impact the number of presentations throughout 2021–22,” Webster said….