Child's X-ray left unread for weeks at Adelaide hospital despite welfare concerns, source claims
Updated
A shortage of radiologists is causing delays in medical images being interpreted amid claims a child's X-ray was not examined for more than a month at Adelaide's Flinders Medical Centre, a whistleblower has told the ABC.
It is alleged the child's X-ray was done earlier this year and the file noted a suspicion of non-accidental injuries — a potential indicator of child abuse.
Despite that, the whistleblower claims the X-ray "sat there and sat there and sat there" and was not interpreted by a radiologist for at least six weeks.
The Guardian for Children and Young People, Amanda Shaw, said potential child protection cases needed to be treated as a priority.
"If the reports are accurate it would be concerning if a child who may have an injury does not have access to assessment and treatment as soon as possible," she said.
The case has been raised with the ABC out of concern the child may have been at risk while the images remained unread.
The insider said "if the Government cared about child protection the X-ray should not have languished".
The ABC understands at its worst up to 500 medical images were waiting to be read by radiologists at the hospital.
Acting executive director SA Medical Imaging, John Kolovos, said there was "no evidence that the information provided [by the ABC] relates to a case at Flinders Medical Centre Emergency Department".
He said more than 90 per cent of Emergency Department patients needing an X-ray receive a report within 24 hours at Flinders Medical Centre but some non-urgent cases took longer to review.
"Every suspected case of child abuse is immediately investigated by the Flinders Medical Centre Child Protection Service who work closely with the Department of Child Protection and SAPOL," he said.
"Flinders Medical Centre has seen an increase in the number of requests over the past 12 months, including a spike in complex cases.
"We are currently recruiting radiologists for Flinders Medical Centre and this is expected to reduce the number of outstanding non-urgent radiology reports."
Care compromised as workload continues to increase
South Australian Salaried Medical Officers Association's spokesman Dr David Pope said a shortage of radiologists was potentially compromising the care of a range of patients.
"If there's a finding on an X-ray and that's not recognised and relayed to the treating doctors and to the patients, that can have lifelong devastating consequences," he said.
"Increasingly, the workload is going up dramatically and the complexity of the workload is also going up and we're not seeing the recruitment and the employment of enough radiologists to meet that ever-increasing demand."
The Government is in the process of outsourcing radiology services at the Lyell McEwin Hospital because of a staff shortage.
Increasing the hospital's size is a key plank of the Transforming Health plan but the Government has struggled to recruit radiologists.
A UK-based firm, Everlight Radiology, is also being paid to read medical images after-hours for the hospital.
Opposition spokesman Stephen Wade described the child's case as "very disturbing" but not unusual.
He said there were thousands of medical images unread across the health system.
"I've heard a number of reports from different radiologists about delays of weeks in the reading of radiology reports. This case is completely consistent with other reports [I've heard] from people within the system."
Topics: health, healthcare-facilities, doctors-and-medical-professionals, child-abuse, community-and-society, states-and-territories, government-and-politics, adelaide-5000, sa
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