Public patients waiting a decade for a specialist appointments, SA Health stats reveal

Patients are suffering delays of up to 10 years for appointments to see specialists, new health figures reveal, and that’s before they’re plunged back into the limbo of elective surgery waiting lists.

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Public patients are waiting more than a decade just to get an appointment to see a specialist, so they can then get on a waiting list for elective surgery, new SA Health figures show.

The maximum waiting time for a neurosurgery outpatient consultation at Flinders Medical Centre is now 126 months, while the maximum wait for an Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) appointment at the Royal Adelaide is 122 months.

These are for patients classified as Routine or Non-Urgent — cases classified as Urgent are expected to be seen by a clinician within 30 days.

The FMC neurosurgery consultation maximum wait has risen from 113 months a year earlier, while in modest good news the maximum wait for an ENT appointment at the RAH has fallen from nearly 14 years to 10 years.

There have also been some reductions in median wait time, such as for orthopaedics at WCH going from 2.3 years to one month, and for rehabilitation Medicine at QEH reduction from 3.4 years to 10 months, over the past two years.

The prospect of waiting years for an appointment compares with just two-to-four weeks in the private system, according to Byron Gregory, chief executive of not-for-profit South Australian health insurer Health Partners.

“It’s a stark contrast that really pulls into focus the challenges facing the public system on the back of COVID-19,” he said.

“There’s no doubt a long wait in the public system can have substantial impacts on people’s lives, from living with pain to not being able to return to work.

“I think the pandemic has really driven home the importance of having some control over your health – what we’ve seen is that consumers have been prioritising spending on healthcare during this otherwise uncertain period.

“In this COVID-19 recovery environment which has seen a heightening of elective surgery backlogs, the role of the private healthcare sector in taking pressure off the public system is critical.”

Health Partners chief executive Byron Gregory.

SA Health released a statement to The Advertiser saying: “We are working on a number of solutions to address outpatient waitlists and reduce the time it takes for a patient to have an appointment.

“All patients are clinically assessed, prioritised and categorised according to their individual needs. We’ve spent up to $1 million on a new system that will provide better information on outpatient waitlists and help us see patients with an appropriate level of urgency based on their clinical need.

“Alongside our Local Health Network clinical and administration teams, we continue to review and improve the accuracy of hospital outpatient waiting lists. We are working closely with GPs and health practitioners to improve communication and provide guidance when referring patients for specialist care.”

Once people do get finally get an appointment with a specialist they may then face long waits for non-urgent elective surgery.

On Monday there were 19,696 people on public elective surgery waiting lists marked as “ready for surgery” and 1618 listed as overdue.

However, the number overdue has fallen by about half since it rocketed when elective surgery was cancelled as the pandemic hit.