BIOPSIES: WAIT AND WORRY
Lab backlogs mean anxious patients can be left to stew for weeks before results come back, frustrated doctors tell health minister
Doctors are raising a red flag about the backlog of biopsies waiting to be processed at Saskatchewan labs.
The issue came up more than once at a question-and-answer session following Health Minister Jim Reiter’s address to the Saskatchewan Medical Association’s Spring Representative Assembly on Friday.
Dr. Clare Kozroski, a family physician from Gull Lake, was among those to draw attention to the long waits for reports on prostate biopsies.
If a patient is recognized as high risk for prostate cancer, he is understandably anxious about a long wait, she said.
“Quite a few years ago, we lost pathology services in Swift Current and that also means that we have to send our blood cultures from Swift Current to Regina, which is a terrible logistical problem and that translates into a clinical problem,” she said.
Kozroski heard about the long wait for prostate test results from Dr. Francisco Garcia, a Swift Current urologist, when they attended a local regional medical association meeting.
From the time of biopsy to when Garcia receives a result from Regina takes six weeks or more.
“I’m trying to get things done as expeditiously as possible, but for the first five or six weeks I’m handcuffed in terms of what I’m able to do,” he said.
“It’s trying to manage as best as I can with the limitations I have in terms of turnaround.”
He’s frustrated to see patients stewing because of the wait.
“Once we have the result, then we have to discuss different treatment options, if those treatment options are suitable for them based on their biopsy result,” he said. “And also we still need more information in terms of other scans that need to get arranged and completed before we can proceed with any treatment.”
Recent published data suggests the time from biopsy to treatment should be 90 days or less for better outcomes, Garcia said.
“When it takes me 42 to 45 days to get my result, it’s really challenging to make those endpoints,” he said.
Reiter acknowledged the physicians’ concern.
“Our officials are speaking with the doctors who raised those concerns and I’m going to be following up with them in the next few days to get a report on some more specifics on exactly what’s going on there and what we’re going to do to fix it,” he said in an interview.
Doctors stepped up to the microphone to voice numerous other concerns, including physicians’ fee schedule, long ER waits and the lack of alternate care and home care in the community.
ER waits aren’t unique to Saskatchewan, Reiter noted.
“I don’t think there’s a quick panacea to it, but obviously we need to improve,” he said.
A North Battleford physician is angered by the loss of STC because out-of-town patients are regularly missing appointments, which delays their care and wastes her time.
“STC was unique to Saskatchewan,” Reiter said.
“Other provinces don’t run bus companies. When you look at the dollars that were spent subsidizing STC and you talk about the impact on health care, I think there’s are a lot better places in health care that those dollars could be spent.”
He said there are programs in the north for low-income people to pay for transportation to medical appointments.