source : the age
A Sydney hospital is urgently contacting patients who are overdue for surgeries after their admission referrals were found in an unmonitored inbox months after they were sent.
Canterbury Hospital launched an urgent review after being alerted to the inbox containing more than 3000 emails, including referrals for patients needing urgent elective surgery.
The review found 16 overdue patient referrals: four “Category 1” patients overdue for surgery that should have been performed within 30 days, and 12 “Category 2” semi-urgent patients overdue for procedures that should have been performed within 90 days.
Another four referrals were for patients waiting for non-urgent surgeries that had not breached the clinically recommended time frame of 365 days.
A spokesman for the Sydney Local Health District (SLHD), which oversees Canterbury Hospital, sincerely apologised to the affected patients and families, and admission dates have been urgently allocated to those ready for their surgeries.
The hospital did not respond to questions about the patients’ medical conditions, whether any had been adversely affected by the delays, or the surgeries they needed.
Health district staff were contacting affected patients, and had alerted the treating surgeons to clinically review each patient’s case and prioritise them appropriately.
One patient needing urgent surgery and two semi-urgent patients underwent their procedures late last week after the error was discovered, and one urgent patient decided not to be admitted to the hospital.
“Patient safety and wellbeing remain our highest priorities, and we have worked urgently to minimise any impact on those affected,” the spokesman said in a statement.
The spokesman said the hospital implemented immediate measures to prevent further delays, including clearer staff accountabilities, strengthening governance arrangements and better monitoring and executive oversight of admissions processes.
Dr Fred Betros, President of the Australian Medical Association’s NSW branch and a Western Sydney surgeon, said the lapse was potentially devastating for the patients involved and their families.
“NSW public hospitals are already struggling to meet demand due to significant workforce and funding shortages, and we now have patients falling through the cracks at a time when they are in urgent need of care,” Betros said.
Doctors aware of the matter blamed understaffing in administrative offices, and a lack of managerial oversight, which was also causing delays in scheduling clinic consultations for wait-listed patients when appointment slots open up.
NSW Health is currently offering voluntary redundancies statewide to staff in administrative positions. Frontline healthcare workers are not eligible.
The latest NSW hospital performance data shows that at Canterbury Hospital, just 0.9 per cent of patients waited longer than clinically recommended in April to June 2026.
According to the Bureau of Health Information data, SLHD out-performs all other local health districts, with 99.8 per cent of elective surgeries performed on time.
Senior specialist surgeons have repeatedly raised concerns that public hospitals in Sydney and other LHDs manipulate their surgery waitlist data to meet NSW Health-assigned benchmarks, concealing the extent of elective surgery delays, and the true demands on hospital resources.
The tactics included refusing referrals for urgent surgeries unless their surgeons can guarantee an available operating theatre session within 30 days, and down-categorising patients whose surgeries won’t be performed in the clinically appropriate time frame.
“There is a recurrent theme of surgical wait times being reported as under control across NSW,” Betros said. “But we are continuing to see that is not the case”.
The SLHD spokesman said the health district was committed to learning from the emailed referrals incident and ensuring its systems and processes supported timely and safe management of all patients admissions.
