Centre tackles surgery well

By Bridget Cook
CRANBOURNE Integrated Care Centre is hitting the target when it comes to treating the area’s most urgent ill and injured patients.
The Victorian Health Services Performance Report was released last week, revealing that at least half of all Cranbourne’s Category 1 urgent elective surgery patients were treated within four days from January to the end of March – well within the 30-day target.
Minister for Health David Davis said Cranbourne Integrated Care Centre showed strong performance across a range of key areas, including a big reduction in the number of Category 1 urgent patients on the elective surgery waiting list.
The centre admitted 2853 patients in the three months to the end of March, up from 2803 admissions in the same period in 2011 and provided a total of 2853 bed days to patients in the March quarter, up from 2803 last year.
All of the Cranbourne Integrated Care Centre’s 31 Category 1 urgent elective surgery patients received their operations within 30 days in the March quarter.
In the Category 3 non-urgent elective surgery, 99 per cent of patients received their operations within 365 days in the quarter, exceeding the state-wide target of 90per cent.
Mr Davis said across the state, all 10,861 Category 1 patients received their surgery within the benchmark 30 days.
“More importantly, our hospitals are giving our urgent patients the priority they deserve,” he said.
“Our hospitals continue to provide surgery to more urgent patients.”
Mr Davis said the Performance Report also showed Victoria’s public hospital emergency departments had treated and admitted more patients over the past year.
Hospitals saw 375,783 patients through the ED in the three months to the end of March, up by 5303 on the previous year, and admitted 141,958 of them- up by 6258.
Mr Davis said hospitals were still trying to catch up with elective surgery after mass cancellations during the March and December quarters as a result of the Australian Nursing Federation industrial action.