Jennifer Harris goes to bed each night fearing she will not wake up.

Key points:

· Jennifer Harris has a potentially fatal heart condition and requires surgery

· But her surgery has been postponed and SA Health is hoping to reschedule it

· The mother has lodged a complaint with the Royal Adelaide Hospital

The 51-year-old has a condition called mitral valve stenosis, which causes her heart valve to thicken and fluid to build up in her lungs, leaving her feeling exhausted, breathless, and phlegmy.

"Essentially, if I get fluid in my lungs, I can drown in my sleep," she said.

"It's been a really slow degrading of my health."

Ms Harris was diagnosed with the potentially fatal disease in October last year after suffering a serious cardiac event.

She said her cardiologist put her on a waiting list for open heart surgery at the Royal Adelaide Hospital one month later.

"He wanted to try and get me in before Christmas because the condition is quite serious and while I might be OK now, they do like to do the surgery while you are well because that's when you've got a better success rate," she said.

"It puts me on a category rating that I believe is priority one, which is meant to have been done within a month."

 

Jennifer Harris has lodged a complaint with the Royal Adelaide Hospital.(ABC News: Che Chorley)

But the mother-of-three said she wasn't booked in for the elective surgery until Tuesday, January 9.

She said when she rang the Royal Adelaide Hospital four days prior her the scheduled operation, she was told it had been postponed until Thursday, January 11.

She said on Tuesday, she was told she was taken off the waiting list due to "overloading of inpatients" at the hospital.

Since Ms Harris spoke to the ABC, the hospital rescheduled her surgery to Friday.

"It just happened by chance that we were able to secure some additional capacity. Ms Harris will be the second patient on that list," said Kathryn Zeitz, acting chief executive of Central Adelaide Local Health Network.

"A number of things need to be in place to be able to make the surgery happen. We have seen over this Christmas and New Year period an increase in demand for cardio thoracic surgery in particular," Ms Zeitz said.

Complaint lodged with hospital

Ms Harris said she had lodged a complaint with the Royal Adelaide Hospital and had called Health Minister Chris Picton's office raising concerns.

"It's been very isolating because … I can't go out in the heat, I'm on fluid restrictions," she said.

"I did everything they needed me to do as an outpatient [but] never did anyone ever mention that there was even a possibility of this happening.

"This isn't cosmetic, this isn't because I want my heart to look pretty, this isn't because I want to look pretty.

"This is because I want to live."

 

There are more than 20,000 people on the elective surgery wait list in SA public hospitals.(ABC News: Che Chorley)

Health Minister Chris Picton said while surgery postponements do happen, they are rescheduled at the next available time.

"Unfortunately, there are sometimes postponements that do need to occur, but when they do occur, the hospital tries to reschedule them as fast as possible, and that's what's happened on this occasion," Mr Picton said. 

"I think that we need to continue to invest in improving our health services, putting more in resources as we're doing to make sure that there is less pressure."

More than 4,000 SA patients 'overdue' for elective surgeries

Latest SA Health data shows on Monday, there were 20,782 patients on the waiting list for elective surgeries in South Australian public hospitals.

Of those, 4,154 were categorised as "overdue" and 51 had their surgeries postponed.

SA Health data shows 78 patients are currently on the elective surgery waitlist for coronary artery bypas grafts or heart valve replacement. Of those, 45 patients were overdue.

Opposition Leader David Speirs said the waiting lists for elective surgeries had "blown out to higher than they were at any point since the COVID-19 pandemic".

"That is because of the ramping crisis, because elective surgeries are being cancelled to free up beds to reduce the number of ambulances on the ramp," he said.

 

Peter Malinauskas says the overdue elective surgery waiting list has improved.(ABC News)

Premier Peter Malinauskas said the government last year reduced the number of overdue elective surgeries, but the volume was "still far higher than … [it] would like".

He said the government was working with private hospitals to increase their ability to perform elective surgeries and was "funding as many clinicians as possible".

"When we talk about elective surgeries, what we're really talking about is a patient who needs surgery to be able to live a better life," he said.

"It's not urgent, it's not life-threatening in nature, but it does affect your wellbeing.

"We were really proud to have got the reductions in the overdue elective surgery lists last year (and) we hope to be able to achieve that again this year on the back of what was a tough November in terms of those numbers."