The long wait to join the long wait: Queensland Premier Campbell Newman in figure spin over Cairns specialist waiting lists

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NEW software will be rolled out across Queensland that will let patients book themselves appointments through public hospitals and check to ensure they are still on waiting lists.

It comes as Premier Campbell Newman was caught out using wrong figures to defend the state of the Far North’s specialist outpatient waiting list.

As of October 7, more than 17,000 people were waiting to see specialist doctors through the Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Service.

Mr Newman said in Cairns on Wednesday his government was doing everything it could to get ­patients to ­specialists.

“The unions can try and spin this any way they like, but the system today has improved dramatically,’’ he said.

“There’s much more to do, but it’s a far better system than it was two-and-a-half years ago.”

Figures released by the LNP three years ago, however, show the specialist outpatient waiting list (aka the “waiting list for the waiting list”) for the Far North was in better shape.

In a letter to The Cairns Post in August 2011, then-LNP shadow health minister Mark McArdle claimed there were 15,000 Cairns residents on the waiting list. An article in the Post in March 2012 showed there were 15,252 people waiting the month earlier for appointments with public hospital specialists.

Health Minister Lawrence Springborg, when questioned this week about the length of the waiting list, said there was significant demand for appointments across Queensland.

Figures provided by CHHHS last week show that during the 2013-14 financial year there was an average 4009 referrals for specialist appointments each month.

“We’re going through the process now of reviewing those lists across the state and making sure people are appropriately categorised, because in some cases people have been waiting for years and years and years,’’ Mr Springborg said.

“Some people should be managed by their GP, instead of just languishing in the outpatients’ list.”

He said Queensland Health was planning on rolling out new software statewide that would allow patients needing to see public hospital specialists to book their own appointments. “That’s going to be helpful, because at the moment, it’s a more onerous process than it needs to be,’’ he said.

The minister, however, could not say when the new system would be implemented, nor the cost of the project.

The CHHHS is carrying out an audit of more than 24,000 patients who have been removed from the list over the past 12 months, prior to an appointment with a specialist.

Source: Cairns Post