How can we improve waiting time for elective surgery in Australian public hospitals?

This paper presents preliminary results from a study on waiting time for elective care in Australian public hospitals. It uses available data published in Australia to test the hypotheses that public beds and hospital staffing (specialist surgeons and enrolled nurses) influence waiting time for elective surgery in Australian public hospitals. We extracted data from the National Elective Surgery Waiting Times Data Collection (NESWTDC) and analyse waiting times for 8 specialty surgeries in Australian public hospitals. Hospital beds, nurses and specialist surgeons are used as proxies for the endogeneity of waiting times in a multiple regression analysis.Our results show that available hospital beds negatively influence waiting times ( 0.0041 2 b = − in Model 1). Interestingly, the number of nurses ( 0.0024 1 b = in Model 1) and specialist surgeons ( 0.07884 1 b = in Model 2) positively influence waiting times. We conclude that physical resources such as available hospital beds are significant; to improve waiting times, hospitals should be adequately funded. Written by Cindy Merehau Mervin and Sukhan Jackson.

Thanks to healthblog@CSU for this post.