A private company has shut down a cutting-edge medical imaging machine in Tasmania after state and federal governments spend millions to offer the same service.
A parliamentary inquiry into health has been told the debacle was an example of waste and poor planning in Tasmania’s health system.
Regional Imaging installed a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanner at the Hobart Private Hospital in 2010.
A few months later, the public Royal Hobart Hospital next door installed its own machine to use for cancer diagnosis.
The equipment is used to diagnose cancer more accurately to enable doctors to better tailor a patient’s treatment.
Mark Simpson from Regional Imaging said the duplication meant the private scanner was not commercially viable and after about 18 months in Hobart it was sent interstate.
“That was a factor, it is a lack of dialogue with the right people and I think closer communication would have been better at the time,” he said.
A Senate inquiry in Hobart was told the second scanner could have been based in the north to avoid duplication.
Mr Simpson told the inquiry better communication between the public and private health sector could have prevented the situation.
“This does represent a duplication,” he said.
“From our perspective, we have to make choices about where we spend our money.”
Second scanner could have gone ‘elsewhere in state’
Cancer specialist Dr Rob Ware said patients were losing out.
“Having had no PET scanner in Tasmania for a period of 10 years, we suddenly had two within 100 metres of each other,” he said.
“It meant that the throughput wasn’t sufficient through the private scanner to make it economically viable, so after about 18 months I think it was the private pulled the scanner out.”
Dr Ware also said the duplication could have been avoided if the Government had based the second scanner in the state’s north.
“That was an example of waste that is happening in the health system and if we could alleviate that we could do more with the same amount of money,” he said.
Greens Senator Christine Milne said it was a product of a faulty system.
“What should have happened is we should have had one PET in the south, one should have been a mobile unit somewhere else in the state,” she said.
“We are being failed by our health system and our bureaucrats.”
Even though the remaining scanner is frequently used, Dr Ware told the committee it was not funded to perform more than half the diagnostic tasks the new technology is capable of performing.
The Labor-dominated committee also heard the introduction of the proposed $7 GP co-payment would lead to more disadvantaged and sick people putting strain on the state’s hospitals.
Dr Tim Greenaway from the Tasmanian branch of the Australian Medical Association said the co-payment would put more pressure on frontline services.
“There is no where else for them to go, if we don’t have the capacity to treat them in the public hospital system then they’ll present to the emergency department,” he said.
The Senate inquiry is sitting in Launceston today.