Mildura Base Public Hospital failed to triage 150 critical referrals, leaving some unprocessed for up to 16 months, prompting it to report the failures to Victoria’s health watchdog as sentinel events.
Safer Care Victoria is currently undertaking its own investigation into potentially fatal delays at the regional north-west hospital.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the delays involved dozens of patients with cancer symptoms who required colonoscopies or other diagnostic tests, as well as treatment for confirmed skin cancers.
Despite the AMA and RACGP’s calls for digital upgrades to outdated paper records in regional and rural hospitals, Mildura Base remained reliant on paper records and manual sorting, even though it had an IT system.
According to the SMH, a patient who died from cancer and another who received a terminal diagnosis were among the 150 patients caught in the backlog.
It’s unclear whether earlier triage could have prevented the cancer patient’s death, but it is believed that prompt access to diagnosis and treatment would have considerably improved their quality of life.
AMA Victoria president Dr Simon Judkins told The Medical Republic further investigation was necessary, but it appeared to be a “Swiss cheese” dilemma.
“Relying on bits of paper floating around the system is doomed to fail. We need to make sure [hospitals] have robust auditing tools,” he said.
Dr Judkins also addressed the heavy reliance on locum practitioners in rural areas, noting that patients may miss out on proper orientation to the system as a result.
“There’s also the role of the referrer,” Dr Judkins said, pointing to a lack of closed-loop communication.
“In any system, if somebody’s referring a patient in, they would receive notification back that the referral had been received and that the patient was going to be contacted,” he said.
However, he told TMR these possibilities remained “up in the air” until further details emerged.
“We don’t know what [Mildura Base’s] normal system is and what the GPs expect.”
Allegedly, one patient waited almost five months for an initial specialist appointment to discuss removing a melanoma detected by their GP, while another waited 17 months for an endoscopy for suspected cancer.
While similar instances of lost or missing referrals have occurred, none have been on the scale reported in Mildura, he said, adding that while such incidents happened often, each was typically treated as a one-off.
“Usually, people shrug their shoulders and say, ‘we’ll fix it next time’, but then nothing ever gets fixed,” he said.
Urgent referrals should be triaged within 30 days, while non-urgent referrals should be addressed within 1 year, he said.
“Access to outpatient specialist clinics is a long wait, but nobody actually really understands how long that wait is,” Dr Judkins said.
Because of this, patients may not think to question the delay if they hadn’t heard back from their GP.
But he affirmed that the patient shouldn’t be responsible for chasing referrals and that better investment in electronic medical records and robust audit trails was essential, a position the AMA Vic had been advocating for, for “a long time”.
In 2023, then-health minister Mary-Anne Thomas announced more than $14 million would be invested to support Loddon Mallee health services in upgrading its TrakCare electronic medical record systems.
In May this year, the 2026-2027 Victorian budget announced an additional $75 million investment for the regional health infrastructure fund, including IT upgrades and related infrastructure.
According to the SMH, upgrading health services in the Loddon Mallee region would cost approximately $70 million.
“If you look at the cost of $70 million compared to delays in healthcare and people potentially having significant adverse outcomes, $70 million is nothing,” the AMA Vic president said.
In the hospital’s latest annual report, the health service said it had begun transitioning its specialist clinic from paper-based referrals to the electronic system TrakCare.
The report said once the project was completed it “would result in significant efficiencies for the administration team and improved patient experience, particularly greater visibility of patients waiting for care.”
Related
RACGP Victoria co-deputy chair Dr Aadhil Aziz said while he was unable to speak to the specifics of the case, the college had long advocated for a GP on each hospital’s board to facilitate greater transparency and communication.
“We are patients’ advocates,” he said.
While he told TMR he understood the public hospital system was overloaded, better fail-safes were necessary.
He said general practice, like hospitals, was often overloaded, making it easier for patients to slip through the cracks.
“I would ask all of our patients in Victoria to make their appointments with their GPs regularly,” he said, so that patients remained front of mind and their GP could monitor their files, follow up, assess progress and determine the next course of action.
Interim chief executive of Mildura Base Public Hospital Matthew Jukes told TMR the hospital would continue to work with Safer Care Victoria, patients, and staff to refine service delivery and care models and identify areas for improvement.
“This includes reviewing and improving patient wait times and patient outcomes to ensure we have a focus on deliver of high-quality healthcare for our community,” Mr Jukes said.
He said the hospital was unable to discuss specific patient details.
Mr Michael Passaro, a senior managing solicitor specialising in medical negligence at Law Partners, said Mildura Base Public Hospital’s failures were “deeply disturbing”.
“An urgent referral is not just paperwork – it represents a patient waiting for potentially life-saving care,” he said.
“These events demand a transparent investigation, meaningful accountability and an urgent review of safeguards across Victoria to ensure every referral is received, assessed and tracked.”
Law Partners noted that a poor outcome – such as delayed care – would not, on its own, prove negligence.
Further investigation would be needed to establish whether the care provided fell below the standard reasonably expected and caused injury to the patient, a worse medical outcome or other loss, their statement read.
In May, the state government announced it would overhaul the state’s specialist clinics by creating regional waiting lists, and using AI to flag urgent cases, following a Department of Health report which found Victorians were waiting up to four years to access specialist care at public hospitals.
TMR reached out to Mildura Base Public Hospital’s local health network, Loddon Mallee, via the network’s coordinating body Bendigo Health, but received no response before deadline.
The post Hospital under fire after patient’s death amid a referral backlog appeared first on Medical Republic.
Add Comment