Elderly blamed for long hospital waiting lists Health Minister Nicola Roxon, left, tours the cardiology department of Canberra Hospital with ACT Chief Minister Katy Gallagher, second left, and the Federal Member for Canberra, Gai Brodtmann, right. HEALTH Minister Nicola Roxon has blamed the increase in the number of older Australians for the failure of her reforms to cut hospital waiting lists three years after they were introduced. Ms Roxon yesterday conceded elective surgery waits were getting longer despite a $600 million federal spending boost, but said things would be worse if the money had not been spent. The concession comes shortly before Ms Roxon receives a blueprint detailing potential trouble spots with the implementation of Labor's health reforms based on a two-day workshop conducted by the Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association. The results show more guidance is needed on how Medicare Locals will work, where commonwealth funding to the states will be directed and whether hospitals will face a crushing red-tape burden reporting to different performance authorities. A COAG reform council report released earlier this month found the time it took to treat 50 per cent of those waiting for elective surgery rose from 34 to 35 days in 2009-10. The median wait for a coronary artery bypass went from 14 to 15 days and the wait time for knee surgery leapt from 156 to 180 days. "Those figures would be even worse if the commonwealth had not made those investments for the first time ever directly in elective surgery," Ms Roxon said. More than 70,000 extra elective surgery procedures were undertaken with the extra commonwealth money, she said. "As the population booms and ages we know we are facing a trend which had health pressures going like this, whether it's costs, whether it's numbers of procedures, whether it's people present," Ms Roxon said. The states have agreed to improve their elective surgery performance and treat 95 per cent of patients within clinically recommended times by December 2015. AHHA executive director Prue Power, who will deliver a report to Ms Roxon in coming weeks on the health reforms, said the government needed to explain how hospitals would report to and work with Medicare Locals. Health economist Professor John Goss, who attended the AHHA's two-day workshop last week, said the reforms could skew treatment towards hospitals, raising costs and admissions.