A Tasmanian man’s months-long wait for an urgent colonoscopy has become a flashpoint in state parliament, with both the Greens and Labor raising the case to pressure the government over health funding.
The case, first reported by the ABC, involves a man who returned a positive bowel cancer screening result in June and was placed in the most urgent category for a colonoscopy, meaning he should have been seen within 30 days.
It has now been almost 80 days and the Tasmanian Health Service has told him he could wait six to 12 months, with around 1,000 people on the wait list.
Greens MP Cecily Rosol asked Health Minister Bridget Archer what she would do to ensure patients received procedures within clinically recommended timeframes.
Labor leader Josh Willie pressed Treasurer Eric Abetz on how the government could cut $700 million from health without making delays worse.
Archer told parliament she empathised with anyone experiencing long waits but said the government spent “$10 million every day” and 35% of the state budget on health.
She said wait times could exceed the recommended 30 days “due to high demand and the need to prioritise cases assessed as emergencies.”
Archer pointed to record endoscopy numbers, saying nearly 14,000 publicly funded procedures were performed in one recent financial year, exceeding the government’s target of more than 13,000.
That was followed by nearly 13,500 procedures the following year.
She said initiatives to improve access included additional service capacity, partnerships with the private sector, a nurse-led triage model and the development of rural generalist endoscopy services in the north west.
Archer also said $432 million was a “somewhat conservative estimate” of the cost of keeping long-stay older patients in hospital beds they did not need, with three wards offline as a result.
Abetz blamed the federal Labor government for failing to resolve discharge delays linked to aged care and the NDIS, saying an “extra $400 million burden” was being placed on Tasmania’s health sector over the forward estimates.
Willie pushed back, noting colonoscopies generally did not require a hospital bed.
The man, whose name was changed by the ABC to protect his identity, described his state as somewhere between frustration and anxiety.
“My kids know that I’ve returned a positive screen,” he told the ABC.
“They’re stressing about it too because they know that dad’s returned a positive sample, but there’s nothing being done about it basically.”
Gastroenterologist and Bowel Cancer Australia spokesperson Associate Professor John Ding told the ABC that 90% of bowel cancer cases were curable if picked up early and delayed diagnoses led to worse treatment outcomes.
