Bowel cancer tests go missing in the mail under Telstra Health program for Australians

A crucial cancer screening program is failing to distribute lifesaving tests to Australians after they have gone missing in the mail.

Exclusive: Hundreds of Australians are missing out on lifesaving bowel cancer screening kits that are meant to be delivered in the mail under a controversial contract with Telstra Health.

And the return of completed samples by the postal service is often so slow the sample has been spoiled before the pathology lab can test it, Bowel Cancer Australia revealed.

It could be a key reason why 60 per cent of people fail to check for the cancer and it is possible lives are being lost as a result of the mistake

The failures have raised further questions about the value of hiving off the management of government programs to private enterprise in the wake of the PWC tax scandal.

In 2017, the federal government contracted out management of the National Cancer Screening Register to Telstra Health which is being paid over $341.4 million to run the program.

It refused to answer questions this week about its performance but on its behalf the Department of Health advised more than 3.2 million kits are issued each year.

The Department said on average 679 kits don’t turn up every year but Bowel Cancer Australia said that’s likely to be just the tip of the iceberg.

People who don’t receive their kits have to call a hotline number to request a new test, a hurdle that is likely to be a step too far for most Australians who don’t like the test anyway because of its “ick” factor.

People who never make this call won’t be counted by the Department as missing out on a test.

“That an entire screening program relies on the Australia Post postal system is really an Achilles heel,” Bowel Cancer Australia chief Julien Wiggins said.

Julien Wiggins, chief executive of Bowel Cancer Australia.

He also revealed that over one per cent of screening tests sent out by its organisation outside of the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program (NBCSP) did not make it to the testing lab within the required 14 days of the sample being taken.

Telstra Health’s rollout of the bowel cancer registry was almost three years later than the contracted start date.

The cervical cancer registry, also managed by Telstra Health, was more than 18 months late and a Senate inquiry in 2018 called for it to lose the contract because of fears cancer cases may have gone undetected.

A separate Auditor General’s investigation found evidence senior health department officials involved in the decision to award the contract failed to declare their Telstra shares – a potential conflict of interest.

Greens Senator Barbara Pocock Picture NCA NewsWire / Emma Brasier

Greens Senator Barbara Pocock who has led the charge against accounting firm PWC for revealing secret government information said the bowel screen problems “is a textbook case of government outsourcing gone wrong, but in this context lives are at risk.”

“Who would have thought a phone company was a good fit to roll out a national cancer screening program?” Senator Pocock asked.

“In this case we have a three-fold increase in the initial contract price and a result that has cost Australians a great deal,” she said.

Bowel cancer patient Dean Coulton, 54 says the test kit saved his life. Picture: Supplied

Following discussions with the Department of Health, Australia Post said it would work to “improve logistics and reliability for the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program”.

Tests that go missing in the mail are not the only problem with Australia’s bowel screening program.

More than eight in 10 people who return a positive screening test are not getting a colonoscopy to check for cancer in the recommended 30 days and colonoscopy wait times have increased to 119-235 days and in 2022.

Dean Coulton was lucky his bowel screening test did turn up in the mail because it saved his life.

The former Qantas complaints manager said he had no signs or symptoms and was shocked to learn in February 2021 he had returned a positive bowel screening test.

“Once you’ve had something like this, it really changes your perspective to make sure that you’re really living life to the full not putting things off tomorrow,” he said.

“I think there certainly needs to be an investigation to ascertain where the mail out is falling over,” he said.

Originally published as Bowel cancer tests go missing in the mail under Telstra Health program for Australians