One-in-five Queensland patients on secret backburner wait list for critical surgery

Cancer and heart patients are bogged in a secret backlog of sick Queenslanders waiting years to see a specialist doctor in a public hospital.

CANCER and heart patients are bogged in a secret backlog of sick Queenslanders waiting years to see a specialist doctor in a public hospital.

One in five cancer patients requiring urgent hospital treatment, including surgery, radiation therapy or chemotherapy, is waiting longer than the 30-day limit to see an oncologist.

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Neurosurgeons missed clinical time limits to see three-quarters of the most urgent Category 1 patients needing a specialist consultation for brain or spinal surgery last month.

An investigation by The Sunday Mail has exposed a secret “waiting list for the waiting list’’ to have surgery in public hospitals.

It reveals that 156,390 patients – or one in every 30 Queenslanders – are in the queue for a specialist consultation before they can join the official list of 55,916 patients waiting for surgery.

As Queensland Health promotes early detection and intervention as the best way to survive cancer, some public hospital patients are hitting roadblocks for vital screening and appointments with specialists.

Rob Spencer, from Victoria Point, has been left worrying month after month without a diagnosis, after an X-ray revealed spots on his lungs – a possible sign of cancer.

Rob Spencer of Victoria Point has been waiting 11 months for a doctor’s appointment. Photographer: Liam Kidston

When the 71-year-old aged care volunteer developed a cough that would not go away, he saw his GP, who sent him for an X-ray that showed suspicious spots on his lung in April last year.

Nearly a year later, Mr Spencer still has not seen an oncologist or had a follow-up scan to investigate the “highly worrying” symptoms.

Mr Spencer was assessed as a Category 2 patient, meaning he should be seen within 90 days.

“I have been staying level-headed and trying not to worry too much, but if it turns out to be sinister and it has been left undetected and has developed into being advanced or untreatable I will explode,” he told The Sunday Mail.

“It has been a long wait with no sense of urgency and I would have thought it would be pretty urgent.’’

Australian Medical Association (AMA) president Dr Dilip Dhupelia yesterday said it was “extremely rare for a patient’s life to be threatened while on a waiting list’’.

“Emergency cases are always attended to in the appropriate time frame,’’ he said.

“(But) we can’t have a hospital system that is stretched so tight that scheduled elective surgery is cancelled because ward beds are needed by seriously ill patients who unexpectedly present in emergency.’’

Queensland Health Minister Steven Miles yesterday said more than 104,000 Queenslanders had been waiting longer than clinically recommended for a specialist outpatient appointment when Labor came to office in 2015.

He said Labor had removed 60,000 patients from the LNP’s waiting list.

“I’ve asked my department to look at ways more people can have their appointment or surgery quicker,’’ he said.

“We’ve seen a huge increase in the demand for specialist appointments driven by an ageing population and the increasing burden of disease.”

Health Department data analysed by The Sunday Mail reveals that at the start of this year, 9353 of the state’s sickest patients were waiting for a specialist consultation within 30 days.

But nearly a third of the sickest cardiac patients had been waiting longer than the clinically recommended time.

Elderly patients requiring cataract surgery endured the worst waits, with 40 per cent of the most urgent cases waiting longer than a month for a consultation, two-thirds of Category 2 patients waiting longer than the 90-day limit and one-third of Category 3 waiting more than a year to see an ophthalmologist.

Alarmingly, 18 per cent of cancer patients sent to hospital for urgent treatment were still waiting to see an oncologist more than a month after their GP’s referral. For plastic and reconstructive surgery – required after an accident or other surgery – more than half of the most urgent cases have to wait more than a month to see a specialist.

At Queensland’s biggest hospital, the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, 16,371 patients in need of an operation were waiting to see a specialist in January, before they could join the surgical waiting list.

Barely a quarter of patients needing brain surgery were seen by a neurosurgeon within the 30-day limit, with just 28 per cent of Category 2 patients seen within three months.

Thirteen per cent of cancer patients were waiting longer than the 30-day limit for the most urgent cases.

Children requiring heart surgery are having to wait months to see a specialist at the new $1.5 billion Queensland Children’s Hospital.

Nearly half the sick children in Category 1 had to wait more than the 30-day time limit to see a cardiologist, while half those in Category 2 had to wait longer than three months and three-quarters of Category 3 children were waiting longer than a year.

Only 56 per cent of children requiring an urgent ­appointment with a neuro-surgeon were seen within 30 days.

And just half the kids needing a urologist, a third of those requiring an ear, nose or throat consultation, and a quarter of those referred for endocrinology or gastroenterology were seen within 30 days for the most urgent cases.

At the Sunshine Coast University Hospital, only 10 per cent of patients referred to a gastroenterologist for stomach problems were seen on time, with 92 per cent of the most urgent cases waiting more than the 30-day limit, and 71 per cent of the least urgent cases waiting more than a year.

Queensland Health said that “hospital data does not always capture the complex issues … clinical teams face in treating them in the recommended time frames’’, due to an average day’s variety of cases, including 5500 accident and emergency patients.