Tasmanian patients are waiting longer for care at public hospitals, some up to a thousand days despite their cases being labelled urgent, new figures have revealed.
Labor say the numbers hint at chronic understaffing across the board and have triggered calls for more than just a ‘band-aid solution’.
According to the latest outpatient waitlist data from the Department of Health, urgent neurosurgery patients at the Royal Hobart Hospital are waiting 1,069 days for care.
“They’re supposed to be seen in 30 days,” Shadow Health Minister Ella Haddad said.
“Children referred as semi-urgent patients to the Mersey Community Hospital’s Paediatric Clinic can expect to wait 348 days, nearly a year, while semi-urgent neurology patients at the North West Regional Hospital face waits of more than 600 days.”
The situation at the Launceston General Hospital is “perhaps worst of all”, with urgent wound management patients waiting 1,121 days, semi-urgent respiratory patients waiting 940 days and non-urgent respiratory patients facing waits of 2,087 days or nearly six years.
“More than 33,000 extra people are stuck on a waitlist compared to 2014,” Haddad said.
“Tasmania’s health system is sick enough as it is.”
Minister Felix Ellis said the state government remains “committed to investing” in Tasmania’s frontline services.
