Canberra's health system is preparing to undertake more elective surgeries after a $30 million government injection to help tackle a backlog.
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Elective surgeries, except for the most urgent, were put on hold on March 25 in a bid to preserve protective equipment and free-up medical staff for a potential influx of COVID-19 patients that never came.
Surgeries resumed on April 27, but the shutdown led to a backlog in the ACT health system.
Last month, Canberra Health Services CEO Bernadette McDonald estimated there would be about 2250 planned surgeries the service wouldn't have completed by July 1 as a result of the pandemic.
Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith announced on Wednesday a funding boost would allow more surgeries to be undertaken to tackle the long wait list.
"Across Canberra's health services, we are planning at least 16,000 elective surgeries in the next 12 months, an increase of 1,750 elective surgeries targeted for 2019-2020," she said.
"Increasing activity now is essential to the future of our health system. We are doing this to ensure current and future patients will have access to timely and appropriate healthcare while we work to recover from the challenges presented by COVID-19."
Ms Stephen-Smith said both public and private hospitals would take on extra surgeries.
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"We have a very strong partnership with private hospitals in the ACT. This puts us in a solid position to leverage the facilities and resources of the private health system as we continue to catch-up on elective surgery."
The funding will also increase services including 14,000 extra specialist outpatient appointments, school checks for kindergarten children, 1900 dental appointments targeting people with special needs, kids and vulnerable groups, 2600 child development checks and 679 additional endoscopy procedures.