The measure is part of an almost $30 million allocation in the upcoming territory budget to deliver more elective surgeries.

The ACT again missed its target for elective surgeries in the last financial year.

Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith said the latest advice showed about 14,000 elective surgeries were delivered in 2021-22 but the target was 14,800.

Despite this, Ms Stephen-Smith said staff had done an "incredible job" to deliver the amount of surgeries they did, given the Delta and Omicron waves.

In recent months elective surgeries have been postponed due to high demand and staffing shortages facing the hospital.

The territory also fell short of its elective surgery targets in the 2019-20 and 2020-21 financial years.

However, the government is pressing ahead with its goal to achieve 60,000 elective surgeries in the four years to 2024-25.

In order to achieve this, Ms Stephen-Smith said private hospitals would take on some of the load as the introduction of the government's Digital Health Record project would have a "significant impact" across the public health system.

The project would collate paper records and clinical records of patients held in separate IT systems. More than $150 million has been dedicated to the rollout of the system in the 2018-19 ACT budget.

MORE A.C.T. BUDGET 2022-23

The Canberra Times understands there are concerns from hospital staff around the timing of the roll out particularly as the health system is facing significant strain.

Some of the $30 million funding for elective surgeries in the upcoming budget is going towards shifting elective surgeries to the private system.

Ms Stephen-Smith said this was to help Canberra Health Services reach a target of 14,800 surgeries this financial year.

"The [digital health record] work will require some slowdown in activity, so some of this funding is around ensuring that some of that activity can be transitioned to the private sector so we can meet that target," she said.

The $30 million for elective surgeries was part of a $70 million budget announcement for the health system.

It included $5.7 million to increase endoscopies by 900 over the next two years, $17 million to deliver more intensive care unit and inpatient beds and $12.1 million towards maternity services.

It also included $4.8 million to expand community paediatric teams for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.

Opposition Leader Elizabeth Lee labelled the budget funding as a Band-Aid fix.

"This is clearly a Band-Aid fix for the years and years of neglect and underfunding that this Labor Greens government has been putting into our health system," she said.

"Whilst COVID has seen a huge impact across the country, in terms of our health system, it exacerbates the existing problems that we have seen in our health system."

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