And more theatre staff - such as anaesthetists and nurses - would be needed, along with a higher budget, NSW Nurses and Midwives Association Maitland branch delegate Kathy Chapman said.

"Those people are already working lots of extra hours already - the ones that are there," Ms Chapman said.

"You can't open a theatre unless you have the right amount of staff. If you can get extra staff and open up those theatres, that costs money."

She said the waiting list times for elective surgery were "astronomical".

An AMA [Australian Medical Association] report, released ahead of the election, said "patients are waiting months and sometimes years to access elective surgery".

"They're always the ones that get put back because we have so many emergencies. We have people we fast on the wards [ahead of expected surgery] that are acutely unwell, but something more acute might come in," Ms Chapman said.

"Imagine that's happening and in the background you have people waiting for hip replacements and ordinary surgery."

Her comments follow the Minns government announcing a "surgical care task force" to report on ways to slash hospital waiting lists for elective surgery.

The government is also under pressure to establish a royal commission into the state's healthcare funding. The previous state government spent $33 billion on healthcare in the 2022-23 budget.

The Health Services Union released a report before the election that found the system is "at breaking point" and raised concerns about a misallocation of spending.

It found the system focused on unnecessary and expensive procedures, rather than primary or preventive healthcare.

NSW Health Minister Ryan Park said the government would be examining how the government allocates "precious taxpayers' dollars" on health services.

NSW Premier Chris Minns said almost 100,000 people were on elective surgery waiting lists in NSW at the end of December, including more than 17,000 who had waited longer than the clinical guidelines recommended. This included 4000 children.

Mr Minns said the new surgical task force would be overseen by a 10-person board.

"The task force will be charged with ensuring we make a real dent in the list, clearing the backlog and ensuring people are not left on the list longer than clinically recommended," Mr Minns said.

Recommendations will be made on efficiency programs, better collaboration with the private sector and suggestions about how to reduce the waiting list. The task force was one of Labor's final election promises.

The Newcastle Herald reported in October that Hunter surgeons and proceduralists had been directed to change the clinical urgency categories of patients on waiting lists to meet NSW Health's elective surgery benchmarks.

Hunter New England Health chief executive Michael DiRienzo resigned in February.

Ms Chapman said the pressure on health districts to avoid breaching surgery wait times comes from the "people that hold the budget for that - the state government through the ministry of health".

"It's a way for the state government to transfer accountability," she said, adding that budgets only stretch so far.

"You have enough budget for a certain amount of anaesthetists and nurses. Managers are stringent. Every dollar counts in our health service.

"If they're saying they're going to cut waiting times, ultimately they're saying they're going to apply more budget, hopefully."

IN THE NEWS:

To see more stories and read today's paper download the Newcastle Herald news app here.