A revised Tasmanian Health Department performance target will allow for up to almost one in three elective surgery patients to wait longer than they should for surgery.
There are about 9,500 people on the department's elective surgery waitlist.
Under its annual service plan — which sets out key performance indicators (KPI) for the year — the department has set the KPI for the percentage of patients waiting longer than clinically recommended for elective surgery as "not more than 30 per cent".
Put another way, the department has set a target of getting at least 70 per cent of elective-surgery patients treated within their clinically recommended time frame.
For the Australian Medical Association (AMA) Tasmania, it's a bar that has been set too low.
"No system is perfect," AMA Tasmania president Dr Meg Creely said.
Dr Creely said the way the KPIs were measured across subsequent years further complicated the picture.
In last year's plan, the health department's target for the amount of patients waiting longer than clinically recommended times for elective surgery was measured as a number, rather than a percentage.
That number was no more than 270 patients who should wait longer than clinically recommended for elective surgery.
"When you work it out as a percentage, it's gone from about 1.2 per cent to 30 per cent," Dr Creely said.
The lack of continuity between annual service plans made it difficult for health practitioners and members of the public to understand what was going on within the health service, Dr Creely said.
"It's really hard when there's different numbers that are used, where it's hidden in budget papers, hidden in annual services plans."
A Tasmanian Health Department spokesperson said the revised target reflected the increased demand for elective surgeries.
It is "a realistic and evidence-based assessment of current demand, service capacity and the health system operating environment caused by ongoing issues with bed availability due to a lack of aged care and NDIS placements for Tasmanians," the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson did not answer a question from the ABC about whether the AMA's claim that the previous target has increased from 1.2 per cent to 30 per cent was accurate.
The latest data from July shows at 59 per cent of elective surgeries were delivered on time, meaning fewer than six in 10 patients across the state received surgery within the clinically recommended time frame.
And performance has deteriorated over the past year.
In July last year, the number of elective surgeries performed within the clinically recommended time frame was 64 per cent.
Urgent surgeries delayed
In Tasmania, elective surgeries are broken down into three categories.
Category 1 is deemed "urgent", with patients needing to be treated within 30 days.
In that most urgent category, 65 per cent were admitted within the recommended time frame in July, meaning more than one in three category 1 patients waited longer than the clinically recommended time.
Under its new plan, the health department said it wanted 95 per cent of category 1 surgeries performed within the clinically recommended time frames.
Category 2 is "semi-urgent", and is designated for patients to be treated with 90 days, while category 3 is for "non-urgent" elective surgeries which should be treated within 365 days.
Under the new 2026-27 plan, the health service aims to complete more than 21,500 elective surgeries, a slight decrease of about 400 from last year.
According to the state budget, health funding will increase by 8 per cent over four years, due to extra federal funding.
However, the Tasmanian government has also tasked the health department to find $702 million in efficiency cuts over four years.
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Dr Creely said the elective surgery backlog risked entrenching a two-tier system between those who can and can't afford private health care.
Within the new health department plan is another target: clearing its elective surgery backlog.
It lists a target of "zero" for the number of patients waiting for elective surgery prior to 30 June 2024.
