ACT Labor election promise to increase endoscopy procedures by 5000 by 2023 unlikely to be reached

ACT Labor committed to spend $16 million over three years in the 2020 campaign to upgrade and expand existing endoscopy facilities at Canberra Hospital. This commitment was expected to deliver 5000 extra procedures a year by 2023.

However, the total number of procedures completed in the last financial year was only just over 4000 and, so far, the government has only allocated $8.7 million.

The government did not directly answer whether the election promise for the $16 million commitment would be kept.

The Canberra Times asked Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith's office about the election commitment on Tuesday and a Canberra Health Services spokeswoman provided a response on Friday.

The spokeswoman said funding for "additional scopes" was brought forward with $7.9 million allocated in the past three budgets to immediately increase endoscopy procedures.

"This funding facilitated the provision of extra operational hours, including Saturday lists, to increase throughput within the existing endoscopy suites at Canberra Hospital," the spokeswoman said.

The spokeswoman said a further $800,000 was spent on a feasibility study and design work for the expansion of existing endoscopy suites at Canberra Hospital.

The number of endoscopy procedures has increased since this funding, the spokeswoman said.

When asked how many procedures could be done in one year at present, the spokeswoman said there were 4087 procedures done in the last financial year.

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The government said it was still committed to achieving the 5000 target.

Opposition health spokeswoman Leanne Castley questioned how the government would prioritise this given elective surgery pressures.

"Once again, we see the Labor-Greens government neglecting our health system, making huge election commitments and not following through," she said.

"With elective surgery wait times already blown out, how is the government going to prioritise the remain endoscopy surgeries they promised."

Upper endoscopies can be used to diagnose stomach and oesophageal cancer, whereas lower endoscopies - otherwise known as colonoscopies - can be used to diagnose bowel cancer.

In April 2021, The Canberra Times revealed the waiting list for the procedure in the public health system had blown out to 7200 people. This prompted a full audit of the waiting list. At the time, health professionals said the official waiting list figures revealed a "frightening" state of affairs.

The current waiting list is 9085, however, this cannot be compared against the 7200 figure as the spokeswoman said the introduction of the new digital health record meant waiting lists were being reported differently.

Under the old system individual patients were counted but the new system counts the waiting list by procedures.

"This meant that if a patient was waiting for both an endoscopy and a colonoscopy, they were still counted as one patient (the two procedures are usually undertaken during one procedure time)," the spokeswoman said.

"As of October 31, 2022, there were 9085 waiting list entries using this methodology."

The spokeswoman said the waiting list was a combination of those who had booked their procedure and patients who had been contacted and are unable to be booked for procedures or consults.

The median waiting time for an endoscopy procedure across all triage categories is 131 days.

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