Hospital ordered to clear backlog of follow-up letters
27th Sep 2011 Byron Kaye and AAP all articles by this author
ONE of NSW's largest hospitals has been ordered to immediately clear a backlog of follow-up letters to cancer patients, some of whom have died while waiting for advice.
It has been revealed that about 700 people have waited up to three years for the letters to be sent from their specialists to their GPs.
The order follows Medical Observer’s report last week of the backlog, with one case in which a patient had died one year prior to a letter being sent from the hospital to Penrith GP Dr Adrian Sheen.
The letter, which advised Dr Sheen that a specialist at the Westmead Hospital’s Cancer Care Centre “would be happy to [see the patient again] if you felt that was appropriate”, arrived 108 weeks after the consultation for which he had referred the patient.
The letter indicated that it had been dictated by a specialist on 21 August 2009 but was not typed up until 16 September 2011.
NSW Health Minister Jillian Skinner has ordered a review and given Westmead Hospital, in Sydney's west, three weeks to clear the stockpile.
"It's unacceptable," Ms Skinner told Macquarie Radio this morning.
"I'll be checking other hospitals to make sure that there's no delay getting those results to GPs," she said.
As first reported by MO, Dr Sheen said that although the death was unrelated to the time the letter took to arrive, the delay was an insult to the patient and showed GPs were “below the bottom of the food chain”.
“This is an absolute, utter disgrace,” Dr Sheen said.
“The family doctor is the most important thing in the community, that’s the one that gets people through the health system. How am I supposed to help a patient when a letter arrives over two years later?”
A spokesperson for Western Sydney Local Health District (WSLHD) told MO last week that the former Sydney West Area Health Service developed a backlog of medical dictation in 2009 and had since been working to improve communication.
“The [WSLHD] apologises to patients, their families and their general practitioners affected by this administrative backlog,” the spokesperson said.
