01-08-2025
Hope is not a plan: Public patients shouldn't be penalised
All of us hope that a diagnosis of cancer will never become part of our life's story. But we also know that if such a diagnosis does come, early detection and treatment offer a far better chance of survival and recovery.
Since 2006, the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program has aimed to give Australians that better chance – initially for those aged 55 and 65 and today for everyone aged between 45 and 74 – with self-testing kits mailed out to those eligible across Australia every two years.
In Victoria, statistics show that among those who die of cancer, bowel cancer is behind only lung cancer among men and lung and breast cancer among women. So the kits have the potential to save tens of thousands of lives.
But that potential can only be harnessed if a positive test from the kit is followed by a timely examination and diagnosis, beginning with a colonoscopy. On Friday, this masthead's senior health reporter Henrietta Cook revealed that public hospital patients in Victoria are waiting up to nine months to be seen for the vital procedure.
Given that the screening program recommends a colonoscopy within 30 days of any positive test result, time is being lost that could be the difference in successfully treating a life-threatening condition.
Adjunct Professor Iain Skinner, a colorectal surgeon at Werribee Mercy Hospital, described the increased demand for colonoscopies as 'a challenge faced by many Victorian hospitals'.
The Age recently reported that the Victorian Heart Hospital on Monash Health's Clayton campus is having to cut back on operating theatres and recovery beds only two years after it opened. While the hospital insisted the number of procedures performed would not be affected, cardiologists who agreed to speak to us under condition of anonymity said the cuts had already forced them to warn of delayed treatment. 'It's terrible from a patient perspective,' one said. 'The longer they wait, the worse their heart gets.'
Victoria's growing population is one of the reasons that the state's government has embarked on a Big Build of transport infrastructure. But the health of those travelling around the state will not wait. Dr Roderick McRae, the state president of doctors' union the Australian Salaried Medical Officers Federation, argues 'there is a massive underinvestment in physical and mental healthcare across Victoria'.
