About the elective surgery dashboard

The elective surgery dashboard consists of the following four sections, which together summarise elective surgery activity for South Australia’s metropolitan and 29 country public hospitals.

The elective surgery dashboard consists of the following four sections:

Specialties table
Hospital status table
Length of wait graph
Procedures for specialty and hospital table

View the Elective Surgery dashboard.

More information about the Elective Surgery dashboard is available in the Elective Surgery dashboard fact sheet (PDF 351KB).

The Elective Surgery dashboard is a tool that was designed to help hospitals and surgeons manage and monitor waiting times and schedule elective surgery.

The dashboard does not provide information about individual patients and cannot be used to determine how long a particular patient will wait for their elective surgery procedure.

Elective surgery and waiting times

Elective surgery is planned surgery that can be booked in advance following a specialist clinical assessment. It does not refer to emergency surgery or treatment.

Patients needing elective surgery are placed on a waiting list to be treated according to the clinical urgency category assigned by their treating medical practitioner. There are three clinical urgency categories used:

Category 1: Procedures that are clinically indicated within 30 days
Category 2: Procedures that are clinically indicated within 90 days
Category 3: Procedures that are clinically indicated within 365 days

The length of time a patient will wait for their elective surgery is affected by factors including the type of treatment needed, the clinical urgency and the hospital where the patient is being admitted.

Every effort is made to treat patients within the clinically indicated time. However, sometimes other factors can affect the timely treatment of all patients, including the need for public hospitals to give priority to emergency patients who need a hospital bed.

The Elective Service dashboard at a glance

Specialties table

The Statewide Specialty table shows all specialties and provides information about:

the total number of patients who are ready for surgery (RFS)
the number of patients who have been waiting longer than the recommended time for their elective surgery (Overdue On List)
the total number of postponements
colour coded alert indicators, showing the status of the specialty for all hospitals. Red means there are patients overdue and unscheduled, amber means there are patients due to be treated within 14 days and green means there are no patients overdue.

When a specialty is selected, the dashboard updates to display the list of hospitals relevant to the selected region, in the Hospital status table that perform surgeries in the particular specialty. This can be changed between metro and country with the buttons above the table.

Hospital status table

This table shows the number of patients waiting for an elective surgery within the chosen specialty by hospital. It provides details about:

the total number of patients who are ready for surgery (RFS)
the number of patients who have been waiting longer than the recommended time for their elective surgery (Overdue On List)
the breakdown of overdue status (Treat Next 14; Treat 15-30; Treat 31-60; Treat 61+)
the number of patients who have been given a date for their elective surgery procedure and whether it is:
timely: booked within the recommended waiting time for their urgency category
not timely: booked outside the recommended waiting time for their urgency category
colour coded alert buttons, showing the status of the individual hospital for the chosen specialty
the number of patients not ready for surgery
the number of postponed surgeries, both by patients and hospitals

Length of Wait graph

This graph shows the number of patients by clinical urgency category and their length of wait for the selected specialty and hospital chosen.

Cat 1 patients (red) with a wait time of longer than 30 days are overdue
Cat 2 patients (amber) with a wait time of longer than 90 days are overdue
Cat 3 patients (green) with a wait time of longer than 365 days are overdue

Procedures for specialty and hospital table

This table shows the specific procedures that patients are waiting to have by chosen hospital and speciality. It also shows a breakdown of the overdue status of the patients on the list, whether they are scheduled for surgery or not, the number of patients not ready for surgery and postponements by procedure.

An alert button column shows the status of individual procedures for the chosen specialty and hospital.

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Last updated: 15 Aug 2024