Queensland hospital to re-examine 20,000 patient scans

ABC NEWS (Australia)

A major review is underway at a south-east Queensland Hospital after it emerged a patient with advanced cancer died after a five-week delay in receiving their scan results, which were not reviewed by doctors. It's affecting 9,000 patients dating back two years, and only became public after the ABC put questions to the health department.

Transcript

00:00Caboolture Hospital is in crisis mode.

00:0520,000 scans need to be re-examined.

00:09As soon as we discovered it was a systems issue,

00:12we've assumed that every single one of those reports

00:15hasn't been reviewed.

00:16That involved 9,000 patients over the past two years.

00:21They must face Queenslanders and explain what they know

00:25and then Queenslanders deserve nothing short of that

00:29and we'll be asking questions as well, I can assure you.

00:32The hospital alerted after a patient presented,

00:36unaware they had advanced cancer,

00:39which could have been detected five weeks earlier.

00:42It was a deterioration in their medical condition

00:46and presentation to the emergency department.

00:48The patient has since died.

00:50The problems were caused by changes to how image results

00:54were given to doctors two years ago

00:57and only brought to light after the ABC questioned Queensland Health on Monday.

01:02There has to be accountability

01:04and the Minister will find out who knew what

01:08and what was shared with people

01:10and whether or not that information was sufficient.

01:12I do apologise. This is not OK.

01:15This is not OK for our system

01:17and we've immediately addressed it.

01:19Despite being in power at the time,

01:22Labor took aim at the government.

01:24The Chris Foley government has been the government for nearly a year now

01:28and they need to take some responsibility.

01:32They need to finally take some responsibility for Queensland Health.

01:36The review of 20,000 scans is expected to take two weeks

01:40but Metro North Health says cases involving high-risk patients

01:45will be prioritised first.

01:47I anticipate the scale will actually decrease over time as we know more.

01:54the

02:11the

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