00:01I spoke to Sydney Local Health District Chief Executive Deborah Wilcox this morning.
00:07She said there's currently an investigation underway to try to understand just how this
00:11happened.
00:12What we do know is that this unmonitored inbox was at Canterbury Hospital in southwest Sydney.
00:18When it was discovered there were 3,400 emails in the inbox.
00:23Out of those 16 were patient referrals for elective surgery.
00:28And the most concerning of those were four patient referrals, which were for category
00:33one patients.
00:35So they're the most urgent category of elective surgery patients.
00:38And if you're in that category, it means that you should have surgery within 30 days of getting
00:44your referral.
00:45There were also 12 referrals for patients in category two.
00:49Now, those patients should have had surgery within three months of getting a referral.
00:54And we know that the first of these referrals landed in the inbox late last year.
00:59So we're now in October.
01:01These patients have been waiting potentially months at this point for urgent surgery.
01:06And what do we know about the patients who've been affected?
01:10So the local health district says that it's speaking to doctors at the moment to try to
01:16understand what the impact has been on each of these patients.
01:19I spoke to the Australian Medical Association this morning.
01:23The AMA New South Wales president, Fred Beatros, says that it's potentially quite a serious
01:28impact, particularly for the category one patients.
01:31So he says that these patients, category one includes patients who have cancer.
01:36It includes patients who might be waiting for heart surgery.
01:39So, yeah, it is a serious category, it's potentially quite a serious impact on those patients.
