In May, the Allan government walked away from a promise to offer an extra 40,000 elective surgeries annually by 2024, lowering its targets back to pre-pandemic levels.
The department said late on Tuesday that health services had been provided with its modelled budgets for 2024-25 and activity targets. It said spending cuts were being considered by all health services as it planned for the rest of the year.
“Health services haven’t submitted their budget action plans to the Department of Health for review and final budgets haven’t been agreed to,” a government spokesperson said.
But several services were making localised decisions about changes to reduce costs in the short term, the health department said.
“We’re working with all public health services to finalise the 2024-25 budgets and ensure funding is focused on frontline care,” a department spokesperson said.
The department said the Victorian government had delivered $2.5 billion over four years to clear elective surgery backlogs that had built up during the pandemic and this funding would continue until June 30.
Some associated programs such as surgery in private hospitals and after-hours surgery were being reviewed.
“In this year’s budget alone, we have invested more than 25 per cent of the state’s annual budget into our health services,” the government spokesperson said.
The budget cuts to hospitals come as a Victorian Auditor-General’s Office report found that from 2013-14 to 2022-23, health services did not meet their targets for patients to be transferred from ambulances to the emergency department within 40 minutes.
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They also did not meet their targets for patients to be seen within the clinically recommended time or the length of stay in the emergency department.
However, they met the target to immediately see all patients with life-threatening conditions.
A senior health source, who did not want to be named because they were not authorised to speak publicly, said their hospital had been asked by the Department of Health to find more than $300,000 in savings next financial year.
They said the hospital had scaled back on maintenance and replaced agency nurses with permanent staff to achieve this target.
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“The windows may not be washed, and the gardens may not be done as nicely,” they said.
The source said the health service had made a conscious decision to not cut any services.
They also said the department had suggested that hospitals increase their revenue by raising car park fees and cafeteria food and drink prices – something that is not possible at many regional hospitals because they don’t have either of those facilities.
The source worried about what would happen in the 2025-26 financial year when the service had to make even greater cuts. They were also concerned about how they would fund the increased wages of nurses following a new pay deal that will go to a vote this week.
The rapid access hub at St Vincent’s on the Park Hospital opened in February 2023. It has the capacity for up to 10,000 surgeries annually, including hernia repairs, minor orthopedic procedures and colonoscopies.
In August 2023, then-premier Daniel Andrews visited the hospital and said: “With rapid access hubs, new public surgical centres, upgraded surgical equipment and more training for staff, this isn’t about a blitz – we’re setting up the system to deliver more surgery now and into the future.”
An anaesthetist, who was told on Monday their contract would not be renewed, said the health department had asked St Vincent’s Hospital to identify savings.
“This is a very dark day in the anaesthetic department,” they said.
Another St Vincent’s on the Park doctor, who said they were also told their contract would not be renewed, said it was not only those losing their jobs over the coming weeks who would suffer.
“[This] will result in a significant increase in waitlist times for Victorians having ‘elective’ surgery and a measurable decrease in the quality of life of all Victorians who have to continue to wait for their operations.”
Opposition health spokeswoman Georgie Crozier said the cuts would have a devastating impact on health services and their ability to deliver timely and safe care to Victorians.
“The priorities of Labor to press ahead with their $200 billion Suburban Rail Loop are all wrong, especially when Victoria’s health system needs support, not savage funding cuts,” she said.
Rural Doctors Association of Victoria president Louise Manning said health outcomes for people living in regional and rural Victoria were already poorer than in the city.
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Manning, who is based in central Victoria, said replacing face-to-face services with telehealth to cut costs would also result in the erosion of healthcare in the regions.
“I’m really concerned we could have poorer health outcomes if small services are cut.”
Victorian Healthcare Association chief executive Leigh Clarke warned that some difficult decisions lay ahead for metropolitan, regional and small rural health services as a result of the cost-cutting measures imposed by the government.
“We’re very concerned that health services have been left with no choice but to make plans which include redundancies of frontline staff, cutting back hospital wards and winding back planned surgeries. In the absence of a change of course, these budget cuts will have immediate flow-on effects for the delivery of care, leading to longer waiting lists and loss of services,” Clarke said.
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