Queensland surgery patients may get private treatment if wait is too long

Proposal would see patients needing the most serious surgery guaranteed the procedure within a set number of days

Lawrence Springborg
The health minister, Lawrence Springborg, has hailed the new proposals. Photograph: Dave Hunt/AAP

Queensland Health will turn to private hospitals to meet surgery waiting targets. The state is considering using a Danish model in which private hospitals perform procedures when the public hospital cannot meet time limits.

The health minister, Lawrence Springborg, says under the proposal, patients needing the most serious surgery would be guaranteed the procedure within a set number of days.

"If patients have to wait longer than the critically recommended time for their surgery, they will be able to be treated in a private or not-for-profit hospital," Springborg told ABC Radio. "They will be in charge of their healthcare and the hospital provider which should have been doing the treatment would be responsible for the cost of that surgery."

The plan, which would take a couple of years to adopt, could mean all category-one patients, including heart attack victims requiring stents or coronary artery bypass surgery, receive their operations within the nationally recognised 30-day limit.

Conditions that are less severe but cause significant pain would be seen within 90 days, while reconstructive surgery to tattoo and piercing removals, would be seen within 12 months.

A similar scheme, Surgery Connect, already operates in the state but is mostly used to reduce a backlog of patients.

The secretary of union Together Queensland, Alex Scott, said the government wanted to talk only about grand announcements.

"We think it is more about spin than substance," he said. "We think this program presents a significant risk for further deterioration in the capacity of Queensland Health if the government can opt out and make it someone else's responsibility, particularly in rural and regional Queensland where there isn't private-sector facilities available to undertake these sort of procedures."