Search the list: Public patients waiting years for specialists ‘not good healthcare’, SA Health boss admits
SA Health has already admitted it’s “not good healthcare”. Now you can search the waiting lists for public hospital specialists yourself and see just how bad the problem is.
SA News
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SA Health chief executive Dr Chris McGowan concedes long waiting lists for specialists at public hospitals “does not represent good healthcare”.
Advertiser.com.au on Tuesday reported patients are waiting as long as a decade for an appointment to see a public hospital specialist.
The SA Health figures show median wait times at major hospitals for routine and non-urgent outpatient appointments now running into years for some problems.
The maximum wait time has blown out to more than 100 months – more than eight years – in eight cases, including for urology, orthopaedics, ophthalmology, neurosurgery, gastroenterology, and ear, nose and throat consultations.
Mr McGowan said such wait times were “not okay”.
“I’m quick to say outpatient management in this state is well below what it should be,” he said on ABC radio.
“It has improved enormously in the last couple of years, times have come down significantly but the way we manage outpatients in this state does not represent good healthcare and good value to the community and the taxpayers.”
He noted different systems meant SA has “many, many more” outpatient visits than comparable hospitals interstate because of continual reviews at the hospital rather than sending patients back to GPs with management plans, while issues from IT to administration need work to clear backlogs.
“We need to invest in fixing (systems and processes), it’s quite a long haul. but it is a major piece of reform we are trying to do,” Mr McGowan said. “We have a long way to go.”
An analysis of the data shows a wide disparity in wait times depending on the condition, and significantly shorter queues at some hospitals compared with others for the same condition.
Some of the worst wait times for an appointment include for cardiology, gastroenterology, ear, nose and throat, dermatology, epilepsy, genetics, ophthalmology, neurosurgery and immunology where the median wait runs into many months, or years, at most hospitals.
In contrast, the wait for an appointment for breast issues, haematology, gynaecology oncology, medical oncology, geriatric medicine, obstetrics and psychiatry is listed as from zero to two months at all hospitals.
Pain management varies from zero wait time at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, to 19 months at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, and there is no wait for palliative care appointments at any hospital except the Women’s and Children’s where the median is two months.
The wait for a cardiology appointment varies from less than one month at Flinders Medical centre, to 15 months at the RAH and 28 months at QEH.
Chief executive of not-for-profit private health fund Health Partners, Byron Gregory, noted the wait in the private system for an appointment was two to four weeks, underlining the value of private cover and also that the private system took part of the load off the public system.
Australian Medical Association state president Dr Chris Moy said it also showed the value of primary healthcare and prevention.
Patients who do finally see a specialist may then be listed for elective surgery – as of Tuesday there were 19,703 patients listed as ready for surgery and 1606 listed as overdue.
The overdue list blew out when most elective surgery was cancelled due to the pandemic but Health and Wellbeing Minister Stephen Wade said that had now been almost halved from its peak of 2781.
