Page 947 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 17 March 2010
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this area, waiting times are improving, and this improvement has been significant. Over the first seven months of 2009-10, a total of 92 per cent of all new radiation therapy clients were seen within the recommended national time frames. That is a 19 per cent improvement on the 73 per cent reported for the same period last year. This is a result that should cause us to applaud the service rather than drag the name of our radiation therapy service through the mud.
Let us look at the numbers in more detail. There are four national categories for radiation therapy patients, with benchmark waiting times for each category. Under national benchmarks, urgent patients should have commenced treatment within a 24 to 48-hour standard time frame. Over the first seven months of 2009-10, 97 per cent of all urgent patients were seen within 48 hours. While this is less than the 100 per cent target for urgent patients and the 100 per cent reported last year, it refers to a single patient not meeting the time frame by a single day.
For the next most urgent patients—referred to as semi-urgent patients—ACT Health reported that 96 per cent were seen within the national standard waiting time of four weeks, well up on the 85 per cent reported last year. For non-urgent category A patients, the third category of patients, 86 per cent commenced treatment within the four-week standard time frame compared to the 61 per cent reported for the first seven months of the last financial year. For the final urgent category—the non-urgent category B patients—ACT Health reported that 100 per cent of patients commenced treatment within the six-week standard time frame against a total of 61 per cent last year.
These results demonstrate the commitment of the radiation therapy staff to improve services to the people of the ACT, despite the growing number of services provided. Despite these results, it is not unusual for radiation oncology services to experience periods of high demand and increased waiting times. Other centres around Australia are also currently referring patients to other facilities for treatment. Some of you will remember that the Capital Region Cancer Service used to regularly refer patients interstate at times of high demand. However, the investment made by this government in providing for additional linear accelerators has increased the capacity of the service and means that very few people now need to travel interstate for care.
In 2009, the operational capacity created by having three linear accelerators online and a full complement of radiation therapy staff reduced the need for patients to travel interstate. This increase in staff was a direct result of an 18-month recruitment strategy which was put in place prior to 2009 to support introduction of the third linear accelerator. This is another example of the Capital Region Cancer Service acting in a strategic way to ensure that the radiation therapy service would be able to make the greatest use of the new linear accelerator, and this strategy worked.
From January 2009 until January 2010, radiation oncology did not refer any patients interstate because of waiting list delays; not a single one. This does not include referrals that private specialists may have made directly to interstate services for other reasons outside of the control of the Capital Region Cancer Service. For the 2010 year until the end of February, radiation oncology specialists have referred 12 patients that were scheduled for treatment to an interstate service. This represents approximately three per cent of the patients receiving treatment at the facility.
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