The number of people on elective surgery waiting lists is the lowest it has been since 1998 and is almost 4,000 below the number of people waiting at the end of 1999.

Releasing the latest Your Hospitals report, Health Minister Bronwyn Pike said the other key indicators of eight-hour trolley waits and ambulance bypass had also been cut, compared with the previous year.

She said 36,454 patients were waiting for their operations at the end of June with well over half of those patients now having had their surgery.

Ms Pike said the latest waiting list number was 3,847 people fewer than the 40,301 patients that were waiting for their elective surgery at the end of December, 1999.

'This is despite our hospitals admitting 270,000 more people than they did in 1999,' Ms Pike said.

'And it's a massive 5,334 people fewer than it was at same time in 2005.'

Ms Pike said the reduction was largely a result of the Government's highly-successful elective surgery waiting list blitz, which has seen thousands of long-waiting surgery patients taken off the lists.

'These figure vindicate the Government's decision to invest $40 million so far in the waiting list blitz.

'It shows this initiative is making a real difference to Victorians waiting for surgery.'

The report shows that the percentage of patients admitted to a bed within eight hours had increased to 70 per cent in 2005/06, compared to 66 per cent the previous year.

And public hospitals went on bypass 1.3 per cent of the time in 2005/06, compared to 1.9 per cent in 2004/05, and 3.8 per cent in 1999.

Ms Pike said she was particularly pleased that, despite 455 extra people needing urgent surgery compared to the end of the previous six-month period, all still received their surgery in the required 30 days with the average waiting time of seven days maintained from the previous period.

The new figures show there were 1,673 fewer people waiting for semi-urgent elective surgery with the list being cut from 17,708 at the end of December, 2005 to 16,035 at the end of June this year.

And the non-urgent list was cut by 2,659 people with 19,527 people waiting for surgery on June 30, compared with 22,186 on December 31 last year.

Ms Pike said Victoria's hospitals treated 2.15 million patients in 2005/0—either admitted to a bed or treated in emergency—which is more than 500,000 more than in 1999/00.

'But we know we still need to do a lot more to further improve the system and meet the huge challenges Victoria faces to keep pace with a growing and ageing population.'