Govt claims record number of SA surgeries
The state government claims to have hit an elective surgery milestone, one cancer patient saying his experience with the health system has been “nothing but positive”.
Health Minister Blair Boyers is claiming SA hospitals have delivered a record number of elective surgeries as the government looks to cut wait times for patients.
Yet despite the milestone, waitlist numbers have surged, with 25,286 patients waiting for elective surgery, causing an increase in overdue patients.
Latest statistics show that public hospitals delivered 61,915 elective surgery admissions in 2024-25 – an increase of 9.4 per cent or 5,332 more than in the previous financial year.
So far, this financial year, the trend has continued, with 52,957 elective surgery admissions delivered between July 1, 2025, and April 30, 2026.
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This was 2071 more admissions than in the same period last year, representing an increase of 4.1 per cent.
According to the government, the percentage of “urgent” category surgeries completed on time is currently tracking to remain similar to last financial year, while the number of “semi-urgent” surgeries delivered on time is currently tracking up by 2.2 per cent.
Sixty-eight-year-old cancer patient Terry McEvoy was not expecting to have a positive hospital stay but told InDaily he ended up having a “very good” experience after surgery.
McEvoy saw his GP at the end of October last year with kidney cancer symptoms and was sent off for scans. He was then referred to the urology department at Queen Elizabeth Hospital with suspected kidney cancer.
He was contacted within two weeks and had his first biopsy on November 20, within six weeks of his initial referral. After it was confirmed that he had cancer, McEvoy later had his left kidney removed on January 29 this year.
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“The follow-up that I’ve had, the people I’ve dealt with at the hospital have been nothing but positive … it’s just amazing to me that we get this level of service for a public patient and how well we are treated,” McEvoy said.
He believed the surgery had saved his life, saying that the chance of the cancer metastasising into his lungs would have been fairly high.
“The symptoms I had have now gone – the only issue is whether the cancer’s spread to some other part of the body, and hence the reason for the cystoscopies and the scans that I’ll go through over the next 12 months,” he said.
“If there’s no sign of it within 12 months, then basically, it was isolated to the kidney, and that’s it – I just move along in life.”
McEvoy continues to have regular procedures to check for cancer cells elsewhere, including in his bladder area, with the latest procedure in the last week.
In response to the increase in people seeking elective surgery, Health Minister Blair Boyer said that “our government is funding more elective surgeries than ever before”.
This includes the Elective Surgery Reform Plan, which aims to increase the number of elective surgeries and cut wait times.
The plan would also include expanded same-day and extended-day surgery, streamlined referral pathways, and more elective surgeries in regional SA.
There would also be a decrease in surgical length of stay through “enhanced” approaches to recovery and more hospital care in homes.
“Our investment in more than 700 beds since coming to government has helped create more capacity to do more surgeries, and there are more beds on the way through our investments in hospital infrastructure,” Boyer said.
Boyer said last week’s budget saw the government funding more aged care beds for elderly patients currently clogging up the hospital system.
“If we can get the more than 400 aged care patients stuck in our hospitals and health facilities into aged care, we would have even more capacity to meet demand for elective surgery,” he said.
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