A backlog of MRI scans at a major Sydney hospital is putting patients at risk of diagnosis and treatment delays, forcing radiologists to pull out of crucial meetings to determine treatment for cancer patients so they can focus on clearing it.
Patients are waiting up to two months for MRI and other imaging reports because Westmead Hospital does not have enough radiologists to keep up with the increasing workload despite outsourcing a large proportion of their emergency and inpatient reports.
Westmead Hospital has a backlog of up to 3000 unreported MRI and other imaging scans.Credit: Getty Images
In an internal email sent on Wednesday, Westmead Hospital’s radiology department director Dr Susan Grayson said the backlog of unreported scans for outpatients “had reached levels impacting patient safety, particularly the MRI unreported list”.
Most of the 3000-odd backlog is oncology, neurology, liver and pancreas imaging.
“Any scan could potentially have a new disease or progression of disease or something unexpected,” a senior Westmead radiologist not authorised to speak publicly said.
According to the email, Grayson had no choice but to suspend radiologists from attending multidisciplinary team (MDT) meetings to clear the backlog. She hoped the pause would last one to two weeks.
The radiologist shortage is symptomatic of a statewide staff specialist recruitment and retention crisis affecting multiple specialties, including anaesthetists and psychiatrists, as well as nurses and midwives, who are paid significantly less than their interstate counterparts. A radiologist staff specialist has a base salary of roughly $186,241 in NSW compared to $210,332 in Queensland.
Grayson resigned effective November 22 amid chronic burnout in the department, and senior oncologists have raised serious concerns about implications for other cancer patients.
“We, cancer doctors of all types, don’t believe that the hospital executive understands the quality and safety impacts of not having radiologists at our MDT meetings,” said a senior Westmead Hospital oncologist who was not authorised to speak publicly. “It completely blocks the optimal management pathways of these patients.”
MDT meetings are the gold standard in cancer care, enabling all specialties to consider a patient’s pathology and imaging and determine the best treatment pathway.
“We rely on radiologists to explain these scans and ask them questions, for instance, could they get a needle into a certain spot in the lung for biopsy, which may determine what type of cancer a patient has and the treatment pathway? We can’t make those decisions without them,” the oncologist said.
“The consequences of them not being there means another two or three weeks before we can hold another meeting, which delays the patient getting care. It potentially affects cancer cure rates, reduces the chances of successful treatment, or starting a treatment to reduce a patient’s pain,” they said.
Blacktown Hospital outsources up to 80 per cent of its reporting and Concord Hospital had a backlog of thousands of unreported scans this year.
NSW Health did not respond to questions by deadline.
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