Too many Kiwis waiting for colonoscopies
“People need to have colonoscopies to know whether they have a serious bowel disease or not, and that requires resources.”
Dr Phil Bagshaw
Founder of the Canterbury Charity Hospital
People are waiting longer than what is deemed clinically safe for a colonoscopy in New Zealand – and according to medical professionals – it’s claiming lives.
Findings from the Canterbury Charity Hospital have found a large percentage of bowel cancer in people who otherwise would have fallen through the cracks.
It follows several bouts of new research showing an accelerating rate of bowel cancer in under 50-year-olds in New Zealand.
Dr Phil Bagshaw, founder of the charity hospital, said they were asked by Christchurch Hospital to take on rectal bleeding patients aged under 50, as the hospital could not handle the load.
They saw 1373 people between 2017 and the end of the 2023. About 1.1% had cancer and 4.9% had high risk polyps – growths that can rapidly turn into cancer.
Bagshaw said he was worried by the findings, which showed the impact the overloaded colonoscopy system was having on people.
“We regularly see young people who are just married, have kids, they’ve been complaining for ages they have had problems with their bowels. Their GPs have been trying to get colonoscopies and by the time we see them, they have an established cancer,” he said.
“That should not be happening.”
As of March this year, there were 2973 people were waiting for a colonoscopy in Canterbury, and 20.3% of those had been waiting over the maximum wait time deemed medically safe (30 days for urgent cases, 90 days for non-urgent cases and 120 days for surveillance colonoscopies).
Nationally, 17,996 Kiwis were on the wait list, and 278 of those cases were deemed urgent.
Christchurch GP Dr Angus Chambers was frustrated by the number of times he had referred patients for colonoscopies and been declined.
“You get frustrated that you keep writing letters and get declined. You feel like you’re wasting your time even referring.
“We should be erring on the side of caution, but the way the system works prevents us erring on the side of caution.”
The impact was clear, not just in the wait list numbers, but by the anecdotes from under 50s who had struggled to get diagnosed.
Elise Johns, a 36-year-old who got bowel cancer while she was pregnant, fought for five months and spent $2000 on specialists and tests like MRIs to get a diagnosis.
Journalist Jo Mckenzie-Mclean was 45 when she died of bowel cancer last year. She was turned down twice for colonoscopy because she didn’t fit the criteria.
Bagshaw said it was “murder” for GPs trying to get their patients a colonoscopy. If the system stayed so overloaded, more lives would be lost.
“It’s claiming deaths,” he said. “People need to have colonoscopies to know whether they have a serious bowel disease or not, and that requires resources.”
Those resources, according to Chambers, needed to be at the frontline, not used on “restructurings and report writing”.
From his perspective, poor decision making, poor leadership and a poor system was leading to missed diagnoses. Things needed to change, he said.
“Doctors aren’t perfect, and you put them in the middle of a system where its very hard to get things done.
“People are being missed.”