Wait times could increase as doctor contract negotiations reach “crisis point” #qldpol #keepourdoctors
Some of Gold Coast’s 300 senior specialists have increased their private work, leaving a public waiting list of around 25,000 people.
At least 200 doctors are opposed to the controversial contracts they say take away their basic conditions.
Doctors’ concerns are that the individual contracts strip away fatigue management, gives the Government the ability to dismiss them at any time for no reason and ties their key performance indicators to bureaucratic goals, rather than patient-focused goals.
Latest Gold Coast Health statistics show 3500 more people are waiting for an outpatient appointment than the 21,312 in January last year. The earliest referral on the list was received in 2005.
Of those, 1259 people have waited between 22-24 months to see a specialist in areas such as neurosurgery and orthopedics.
Hospital sources say resignations are in the single digits — a medical director among them — but that number will soar if contract negotiations reach “crisis point”.
Obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr Gary Swift said resignations and doctors reducing their public hours would have a substantial effect on waiting lists.
“You either have outpatient waiting lists, or the ones waiting for surgery,” Dr Swift said.
“Both of those things will blow out considerably.
“You’ve only got to lose one visiting medical officer in a particular speciality and you might halve the throughput.
“It wouldn’t take many doctors to leave and very long for the numbers to explode.”
Gold Coast Health chief executive Ron Calvert said the service had made a public commitment to reduce outpatient waiting lists and significant work was being done to do that.
“To some extent our public commitment has contributed to the current situation,” Mr Calvert said.
“We still intend to reduce speciality waiting lists down to less than 12 months in as many specialties as possible by June this year,” Mr Calvert said.
“What is important to patients … is not how many people are on the lists but rather how long they have to wait to be seen.”
Dr Swift, president of the Gold Coast Medical Association, does a clinic day each week for Gold Coast Health.
If he stopped, he said he would leave behind 80 women in gynaecology a month, as each specialist could typically get through about 40 patients in an average clinic day.
The longest wait for an outpatient gynaecology appointment is two years.
“You can see how those numbers would blow out exponentially,” Dr Swift said.
“Those people don’t disappear, they just get treated in a longer time than is ideal.”
Source: Gold Coast Bulletin