VICTORIAN hospitals will start closing beds this week as the federal government pushes ahead with $107 million in budget cuts predicted to double waiting times for some surgery.


Hospital chiefs said they were holding emergency meetings to work out closures this week as the Royal Melbourne Hospital confirmed it would double the length of time of planned holiday bed closures - from three weeks to six.


News of the extra closures came as federal Treasurer Wayne Swan rounded on his Victorian counterpart at Monday's treasurers' conference in Canberra, accusing Kim Wells of running an "obnoxious" campaign against the cuts.


Sources at the meeting said Mr Swan went as far as suggesting that if Victoria continued its campaign he would reconsider whether to fund it at all under the National Health Agreement.


Mr Wells said he would not back down and demanded to know the exact formula by which Canberra had decided Victoria's funding would be cut.


If Canberra were serious about open government, it would make the formula available to Victorian Treasury officials to examine, he said. It beggared belief that Victoria's funding should be cut on the basis that its population had fallen, when its population was climbing by 1.5 per cent a year.


The Bureau of Statistics revised down its estimate of Australia's population after the census, but Mr Wells said this did not mean Victoria's population or needs had actually fallen.


Mr Swan did not reply to Mr Wells' request for the formula, suggesting instead that the meeting move on to other topics.


Victorian hospital chiefs said emergency meetings were being held to work out what services could be cut in a co-ordinated fashion across the state. While hospitals always scale back services during late December and January, they were now considering closing beds and operating theatres until mid-year.


Royal Melbourne Hospital executive director Diane Gill said she initially planned to close an operating theatre and 45 beds from the end of this week under regular holiday closures. The beds were due to reopen on January 14 but will now stay closed until February 4. The hospital will also consider closing a 25-bed ward from February 4 until the end of June.


The closures would effectively cut 700 operations, which was ''enormous'' for a hospital facing rising demand, she said.


The chief executives of the Royal Children's and Northern hospitals, Christine Kilpatrick and Greg Pullen, have said they are reconsidering the expansion of operating theatre sessions in the new year, potentially causing longer waits for surgery.


A spokeswoman for the board chairs of Victorian health services, Barbara Yeoh, said a personal meeting with federal Health Minister Tanya Plibersek last week had not changed the Commonwealth's decision.


Southern Health chairwoman Ms Yeoh, who has served on hospital boards for 15 years, said the cuts, which include the clawing back of $40 million already used last financial year, were ''absolutely unprecedented''.


''I've never encountered anything like this,'' she said.


The board chairs predict the funding cuts will cause the closure of 440 beds or the cancellation of more than 21,000 elective surgeries in the next six months.


A spokesman for Ms Plibersek said the Commonwealth was still increasing health funding to Victoria by 26 per cent over the next four years. ''The Baillieu government decides how to distribute the money, not the Commonwealth. Any cut to local health services is being made by the Baillieu government, and follows $616 million in Victorian budget cuts to health.''