Oh, well played Queensland Health. Well played.
I am on day 578 of being on the Queensland Health public waiting list for a knee replacement.
Yes, you read that right – 578.
On 15 April 2024, when my GP put me on the list, the system told her that the average waiting time was around 440 days.
That suggests things have become increasingly worse in my part of the Queensland Health system – Darling Downs Hospital and Health Service, to be precise.
But on day 576 (Wednesday) I got a phone call from the local orthopaedic outpatient clinic’s GP who proceeded to assess the urgency of my case.
He was excellent, asked all the right questions, and quite correctly assessed that I am not an urgent case – although a replacement in at least one knee is an inevitability.
In fact, he has referred me to a three to six-month course of publicly funded physiotherapy, as an alternative to surgery. Thank you very much.
I will be kept on the surgical waiting list, he assured me, but I will be reassessed in the middle of 2026 after my physiotherapy treatment.
By which time I will have been on that list for about 800 days.
Now, I’m not arguing with that decision at all – the fact is my situation doesn’t warrant prioritisation – and truthfully, if it was urgent, I’d go private.
But the fact that it took 576 days for someone to try and find out if my case was urgent is, surely, concerning.
Also, is sliding me onto a “shadow list” of people still on the surgical list but trying an alternative treatment first a way of artificially lowering the number of Queenslanders still “on” the list?
Well played Queensland Health, well played.
Bulk billing
If you haven’t yet had a chance to read the op-ed we ran on Thursday from Alex McKenzie on exactly why the government’s bulk-billing policy is not only not going to work but will actually make things worse, then I suggest you take a peek.
It’s not behind our paywall, so non-subscribers can read it, and I heartily recommend it.
It’s the best explanation I’ve seen on how the Medicare system for GPs is broken and how the recent incentive changes will only amplify that broken-ness.
I long ago stopped believing that the Blair Comleys and Mark Butlers of the world listened to cranky gibberers like me, but perhaps they can bear to read the words of a man who did a stint giving economic advice to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
Related
They’re not listening to GPs, it seems.
By the way, this week the DoHDA signed off on contracts worth at least $819,179.15 to public relations firms (here, here, and here) for the campaign to make the public aware of bulk billing. And that’s just the contracts I found yesterday.
Worth the money? You be the judge.
Aged care
Meanwhile, the bad news just keeps on coming on the aged care front.
A new report from Colliers and Boxwell shows that there was a net increase of only 578 new aged care beds across the country in 2024-25.
Not only is that ridiculously shy of the projected increase in demand of over 9000, it’s also short of the 800 the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing said were built.
Official occupancy rose by 2.5% to 94.4% — that means in some areas of the country there is already no immediate access to aged care. Bed block, anyone?
Read Caitlin Wright’s full report, here.
I’m off to vent my rage and frustration on the weeds. Have a good weekend, all.