Outpatients at risk of falling off waiting lists and remain in the dark about how long until they will be seen, doctors warn
South Australians waiting for surgery are receiving letters warning them they’ll drop out of queue if they don’t respond in time.
Confused outpatients in South Australia are at risk of dropping off the waiting list for treatment under a system that requires regular confirmation that they want to stay in the queue, doctors warn.
The Opposition has obtained a form, sighted by The Advertiser, which was received by an ear, nose and throat outpatient earlier this month and warned they would be booted from the waiting list if they failed to respond in 30 days.
The form, on an SA Health letterhead, warns: “If we do not hear from you within 30 days, we will assume you no longer wish to attend the clinic and your name will be removed from the waiting list”.
It says the patient will keep their position in the queue if they later seek reinstatement after having been discharged.
Opposition health spokesman Chris Picton said the State Government was seeking to “cleanse” waiting lists by cutting numbers even if treatment wasn’t received.
“Letters such as these would serve no purpose in actually seeing people earlier,” Mr Picton said. “They’re not contacting the patient to offer him an appointment and see if he still needs one; they are just trying to shorten the waiting list.
“That is a PR exercise, not a public health exercise.”
Australian Medical Association SA president Chris Moy said patients who moved house or were not able to respond to such letters were at risk of falling off waiting lists entirely.
“Although this has been going on a long time, and there may be reasons to make sure that a patient still needs an appointment, the issue which is upsetting to that individual is getting such a letter without any visibility or transparency about how much longer they still have to wait for an appointment,” Dr Moy said.
He said a fully-transparent data system would better inform the public about their own wait, and bottlenecks that needed Government attention.
“We, as a community, should be able to see where the real need is and where the hold ups are,” Dr Moy said.
“This way the community can see the needs and problems and advocate in the right way, and the health system can be held truly accountable.”
Health Minister Stephen Wade said the former Labor government had used the same practice since 2014, and its “shifting morality” showed “astounding hypocrisy”.
“South Australians are rightly fed up with Labor criticising the Liberal Government over policies that were also in place while they were in Government,” he said.
“There has been no irregular cleansing.”
Mr Wade said SA Health reached out to a patient’s doctor or next of kin if they were not contactable multiple times.
Auditing lists ensured that people needing appointments were not kept waiting longer than required, he said.