The plight of families seeking timely medical care for children has come to the forefront, highlighted by the experience of Kylie Goldsborough and her son, William. William received a diagnosis of hearing loss when he was two years old. He experienced an incredible wait of at least three years before eventually being seen by a public Ear Nose and Throat (ENT) specialist. This is part of a broader national, Australia-wide crisis in our healthcare system. For areas such as South Granville, residents find it difficult to reach affordable non-public specialists.
The problem of long wait times for public specialists isn’t unique to one lawsuit. By reports, most if not all Australians are having similar conversations with equal, if not worse, frustrations. In other parts of Tasmania, people have been waiting over five years. They try to get into see pediatric allergy and respiratory specialists. People with reproductive, sensory or neurological disabilities who need services from ENT specialists, neurologists or urologists have faced even longer waits — over 4.8 years. For South Australia, the picture is dire. Some patients are waiting more than six years to access neurologists or plastic surgeons.
The absence of clear information on public specialist waiting times, from pillar to post, adds to the chaos. Only four states and territories in Australia consistently report on these unexplained delays. Consequently, most patients still do not know the full extent of the issue. This makes families like Goldsborough’s have no choice but to look for private care, as a consequence receiving many times more cost burdens.
Families Facing Unacceptable Delays
Read Kylie Goldsborough’s fight to ensure her son received emergency medical treatment in time. Her journey underscores the myriad frustrations that families are encountering within our health care system. Once Arcaria found out that her town had a three-year wait to see a public ENT specialist, she decided to do something about it. So she opted to pay out of pocket for a private consultation. This choice ended up being extremely important, as the private specialist was able to swiftly set up the surgery William needed.
Goldsborough shared her frustration at the systemic failures she faced at every turn in this process.
“Every single step of the way, I’ve had to literally, and the word I would use is ‘fight’, to ensure that my children get what they need,” – Kylie Goldsborough
Her experience is not unusual. As you know, too many families are making the same difficult trip, enduring long waits and lack of access to critical care.
As made apparent by the case of South Granville, the escape valve is unequal—exposing a pronounced geographical pandemic divide in healthcare access. And with private specialists frequently being financially out of reach for many families, public services become impossible to avoid. Sadly, these local support services and networks are already inundated and stretched thin to meet the urgent and immediate needs of patients calling for help.
The Broader Impact on Health Outcomes
In fact, the consequences of these waiting times can be more than just inconvenient. They can result in death. Healthcare advocate Julian Rait gave a moving account of the impact on people’s lives from having to wait too long to access treatment.
“It’s a devastating impact for very many people. Either their disease gets worse, it progresses, and they suffer an irreversible complication as a result of that, or alternatively they suffer in silence with chronic pain,” – Julian Rait
Rait reiterated that the burden placed on people because of these delays is huge.
“It’s really an enormous burden that is being placed on people as a result of these delays,” – Julian Rait
In his opinion, Australia’s healthcare system fails to deliver on equitable access to core services. The need for a thoughtful evaluation of the system has never been more urgent.
“We need to actually know how well the system is performing and whether our tax dollars are being used productively and effectively to reduce the burden of disease and encourage a healthier way of life for many people,” – Julian Rait
As families continue to wait for these essential, often life-saving medical services, their health outcomes are still at risk. When we fail to provide patients the care they need when they need it, we’re not just letting individual patients down—we’re failing the whole healthcare system.
Calls for Systemic Change
Healthcare professionals have been shouting from the rooftops about these unacceptable waiting times patients are forced to endure. As Simonil Mehta, a General Practitioner in Western Sydney, has written, it is getting harder and harder to refer patients to public specialists.
“It’s really difficult and it’s really hard to look people in the face and tell them either you’ve got to pay to see the specialist privately or there’s no one that I can send you to,” – Simonil Mehta
Graeme Stewart, former Director of Outpatient Services of Westmead Hospital in Sydney, expressed the seriousness of the problem. He noted that each statistic is an individual who is living in unnecessary pain because they are waiting too long.
“Each statistic is a person who’s waiting for essential care way, way beyond the time that is clinically appropriate and that carries with it the risk of preventable death,” – Graeme Stewart
Stewart’s comments illustrate the compelling chorus of voices from across the health care continuum calling for transformation. He echoed these sentiments in an April statement where he called for the federal government to create a policy-making body focused on surmounting these challenges.
“Clearly, we’d like to think in a society such as Australia, a so-called rich country, that we can actually deliver a first-rate health care system,” – Julian Rait
The Australian Health Reform Commission Labor first proposed the Australian Health Reform Commission during the 2019 election campaign. These were meant to increase people’s access to public experts as well as everybody’s access to them. Negotiations over a new five-year national agreement on public hospital funding between the Commonwealth and states have broken down.
