Eye patient's long wait after referral draws fire

By ELIZABETH BINNING

Auckland City Hospital has come under fire for taking more than a year to acknowledge an eye patient's referral.

When an ophthalmologist finally responded to the referral nearly 500 days later, it was to say the patient could not be treated because 2500 other people were on the waiting list.

The Auckland District Health Board this week acknowledged that it was not responding quickly enough and was not able to treat all of its eye patients within a reasonable time.

It has sent letters to more than 2000 non-urgent patients telling them to go back to their family doctors for care rather than wait for treatment, which they are unlikely to receive in the near future.

But the National Party's associate health spokesman, Paul Hutchison - who yesterday raised the issue in Parliament - said the long waiting lists were unacceptable.

He questioned how the public could have faith in the Government's commitment to fair access to health services when specialists could not acknowledge letters of referrals within the same year.

"Many of the people needing specialist care can't even get to see a specialist, let alone get on a waiting list for an operation."

Dr Hutchison said none of Auckland's 28 services were acknowledging referrals from GPs within the required 10-day period.

Fourteen of the 20 other health boards around the country had a 100 per cent acknowledgement rate for all services, and the remaining six were above 56 per cent.

United Future's health spokeswoman, Judy Turner, said the Government needed to stop running a "Third World health system" and start giving ophthalmology - one of the country's largest patient services - enough money.

Associate Health Minister Ruth Dyson refused to address the funding issue, saying she would not want to pre-empt the Finance Minister's Budget next year.

Auckland District Health Board communications manager Brenda Saunders said the hospital had not been responding quickly enough to referrals.

But she said the figures tabled in Parliament yesterday were collated in July and the board had improved its systems since then.

Twenty-six of the hospital's 28 services were now replying to referrals within 10 days.

The remaining two had not yet changed systems.