Spot on list at risk for patients

TASMANIAN patients waiting for a specialist medical appointment were given just 14 days to respond to a letter asking if they wanted to stay on the list, or risk losing their place altogether.

In correspondence from the outpatient services department at the Royal Hobart Hospital, dated last month and seen by the Mercury, patients were asked if they still needed an appointment.

Patients were told that if they failed to respond from 14 days from the date the letter was sent, their name would be removed from the list.

“If you do not respond to this letter by the due date, it will be assumed that you no longer require an appointment and your name will be removed from the waiting list,’’ read part of the letter, in bold.

But the health department now says time frames for responding have been increased to allow sufficient time for mail delivery.

The statewide outpatient wait list had ballooned to 55,506 at the end of July this year, almost 8500 more than 12 months earlier.

Last month, the Mercury reported some of the alarming wait times faced by some Tasmanians to get a specialist appointment.

This included some southern Tasmanian children with ear, nose and throat ailments facing average wait times of four years for semi-urgent conditions, and southern patients waiting 322 days for an urgent gastroenterology appointment.

Advocacy Tasmania chief executive Leanne Groombridge said the 14-day time frame for a response was inadequate given mail delivery delays.

“Additionally, the functional literacy rate in Tasmania is currently around 50 per cent which means that people on these wait lists may not even be able to read or respond to correspondence,’’ she said.

Ms Groombridge said many of the organisation’s clients, particularly older people and those living with disability and mental health issues, have spoken of their suffering due to the lack of access to medical appointments.

A health department spokesman said regular auditing was an essential part of hospital wait list management, and RHH patients waiting more than 180 days for an appointment on the outpatient list were sent an audit letter.

The spokesman said if there was no response to the letter, two attempts to contact the patient by phone were required, including contacting next of kin and GP practices for contact details.

“Removing a patient from the specialist outpatient waitlist for failing to respond to two audit measures should only occur after the patient has failed to respond within a minimum of 14 days of the second audit measure,’’ the spokesman said.

“The time frames for responding have been increased to allow for the time frames of mail delivery through Australia Post.”

This was made up of a minimum of six weeks for a patient response, but the department would not say when this change had been made.