Non-urgent elective surgery requiring an overnight stay in private hospitals will continue to increase over the coming weeks as COVID-19 hospitalisations decline and community transmission stabilises.
From Monday 28 February, all non-urgent elective surgery requiring an overnight stay will increase to 85 per cent of pre-pandemic activity levels in private hospitals.
One week later, on Monday 7 March, surgical activity caps will be removed completely, allowing private hospitals to resume normal surgical activity.
NSW Health Acting Deputy Secretary Wayne Jones said public hospitals across the state have already resumed non-urgent elective surgery requiring an overnight stay, with the majority of districts on track to be at 75 per cent or higher over coming weeks.
"Our continued staged approach for the resumption of surgery in the public and private sectors ensures people have access to clinically recommended surgery while we continue to balance the COVID-19 emergency response," he said.
"Throughout this time, all emergency surgery and urgent elective surgery in NSW continued to be performed. In addition, the majority of non-urgent elective day surgery also continued in public and private hospitals."
The temporary suspension of non-urgent elective surgery requiring an overnight stay in both public and private hospitals from 10 January 2022 was necessary to ensure there was sufficient staffing and hospital bed capacity in NSW to meet the significant extra demands caused by the Omicron wave of COVID-19.
NSW Health thanks the community for its patience during this challenging period and remains committed to ensuring non-urgent elective procedures that were delayed during the suspension are conducted as quickly as possible.
In 2020-21 the NSW Government provided an extra $458.5 million to fast-track elective surgeries which were delayed as a result of the Federal Government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic last year, and a further $80 million has been provided as part of the 2021-22 NSW Budget.
The NSW Government has committed more than $4 billion to the NSW health system to manage the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic since March 2020.
