80 Days of Waiting After a Positive Screen: Why Tasmania's Endoscopy Waiting List Is 'Invisible'

According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, a Tasmanian patient using the pseudonym Tony received a positive result from a bowel cancer screening kit in June this year and was classified by his doctor into the most urgent category, meaning clinical guidelines required him to undergo a colonoscopy within 30 days to determine whether he had bowel cancer. Yet nearly 80 days later, he had still not been scheduled for the procedure.

The state health service told him by phone that there were currently around 1,000 people on the waiting list and that he could face a wait of six to 12 months. Tony described to the ABC a state of suspension "between frustration and anxiety": "My kids know my test came back positive. They're stressed too, because they know something's wrong with Dad's sample, but basically nothing can be done."

Unlike with elective surgery, Tasmania's health department does not publish the number of endoscopic procedures completed, the proportion of patients seen within clinically recommended timeframes, or median waiting times. The available departmental annual reports, service plans and statements show only that the state completed around 13,500 endoscopy procedures last year and plans to deliver more than 13,000 in 2026–27. The health department said the waiting-list data is monitored through "operational reports and statewide governance committees," but declined to disclose it publicly along the same lines as elective surgery data.

This is not a new problem. The ABC noted that elective surgery waiting times, and delays beyond clinically recommended timeframes, have been a long-standing and widely documented issue in Tasmania, but waiting-list data for endoscopy has remained consistently elusive. For a patient in the most urgent category, this means there is no way of knowing even how long the wait is, or whether the situation is worsening.

Driven by anxiety, Tony contacted his local member. Greens MP Cecily Rosol raised his case during Question Time in parliament on Thursday, asking Health Minister Bridget Archer whether she could confirm what the health department had told Tony and what measures would be taken to ensure similar patients received the required procedure within clinically recommended timeframes. Archer deflected in her parliamentary response, citing "the inconvenience of commenting on individual patient cases," and instead emphasised that endoscopy procedure numbers in the public health system were at a "historic high."

In a letter to Tony, Archer's wording was virtually identical to the phone response. She wrote: "While the recommended timeframe is 30 days, wait times may exceed this timeframe due to high demand and the prioritisation of cases assessed as urgent." She also advised Tony that if his condition worsened, he should return to his GP, who could issue a new referral to trigger a "clinical re-assessment." Tony dismissed the entire letter as "a pile of stock phrases": "It's basically the same thing I was told on the phone five or six weeks ago — 'you just have to wait.'"

The cost of this governance failure is not abstract. Associate Professor Ding, a gastroenterologist and spokesperson for Bowel Cancer Australia, noted that a positive screening result does not equal a confirmed diagnosis, but 90% of bowel cancer cases are curable if detected early; delayed diagnosis not only means worse prognosis, but also means that when patients eventually present in more complex and critical condition, it places greater pressure on hospitals. He told the ABC that the point of the triage system is to get patients treated within 30 days to avoid "unnecessary complications that can arise beyond 30 days." A timely colonoscopy serves a dual purpose: it is both a diagnostic tool for bowel cancer and a preventive measure, by identifying and removing pre-cancerous lesions.

Tasmania's health department told the ABC that demand for endoscopy services had indeed grown, and that several improvement measures had been introduced, including the development of a rural GP endoscopy service to strengthen capacity in the state's north-west. The state government also pointed to outsourcing suitable patients to private clinics. Yet for Tony, a gulf remained between these statements and his own wait. In his interview he posed the next unresolved question: "Say they schedule me next week, and I do turn out to have bowel cancer — then for treatment, do I have to join another waiting list?"