COVID-19
Mr GUY (Bulleen—Leader of the Opposition) (14:51): My question is to the Minister for Health. Minister, how many category 1 surgeries have been cancelled in the last week due to pressures on the health system due to COVID demand?
Members interjecting.
The SPEAKER: Order! The Premier will come to order.
Mr FOLEY (Albert Park—Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Equality) (14:52): Can I thank the honourable Leader of the Opposition for his question. Category 1 surgeries are the most important category of surgery that our hospital system undertakes. They are, as the title would suggest, a very, very urgent and very important category conducted across the private and indeed our public system. As we have responded to dealing with the COVID crisis and this particular outbreak, as I have indicated a number of times, we have responded to that process through a series of graduated responses in different hospital settings—a tiering arrangement essentially. And I have noted a couple of times at least the initial seven, and we are expanding those sites for other locations.
As a result of those arrangements what we have done when it comes to elective surgery, as opposed to category 1 surgery, is allowed hospitals in those streamed arrangements to do swaps with other locations, reschedule or indeed do swaps with the private sector so as to make sure as many of those elective surgeries can keep happening—category 2 and category 3.
In regard to category 1 surgery, the most important surgeries, they have continued to the best of my knowledge. I am happy to go and should inquiries reveal any differently, I will of course report back to the house in due course. We have seen category 1 surgeries continue on largely as is, always subject to the normal vagaries of scheduling decisions that clinicians make around how category 1 surgery is triaged and applied in the particular circumstances of hospitals and in the particular circumstances of individual patients.
Mr GUY (Bulleen—Leader of the Opposition) (14:54): With the Premier stating that parts of the health system will need to be switched off to accommodate COVID demand and a number of hospitals in Melbourne’s east advising of the delaying and/or cancelling of category 1 surgery, what advice has the minister received about the threat to many Victorians’ lives from simply switching off some of these lifesaving surgeries?
Mr FOLEY (Albert Park—Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Equality) (14:54): I refer the honourable Leader of the Opposition to the answer to my substantive question. We are as yet, at this time, beyond the issue of some issues for category 2 and category 3 in some locations. Those decisions have yet to be made, and I am yet to receive any formal advice as to the question the honourable member asked.
However, we need to look to, for instance, circumstances north of the Murray and indeed circumstances that this state went through in the winter of 2020 to look at the various implications of where this might well end up. As the honourable member clearly has as the premise of this question, as COVID cases and demand ramp up, the hospital system needs to manage that safely and carefully in the interests of both patients and, of course, its own staff in regard to how these matters operate.