Patient calls for better communication by Interior Health after waiting weeks for a biopsy appointment

A Kelowna woman is calling on Interior Health to make it easier for patients requiring biopsies for suspected cancer to find out where they are in the queue.

Cindy Mooney waited more than two weeks for an appointment after her doctor ordered an urgent requisition. Then she made a phone call to the hospital to ask how much longer it would be but was told they could only tell her if they received her requisition, not where she was on the waitlist.

She says her doctor can look online to see that her requisition is pending, but couldn’t find out a timeline.

“What I’m hearing from everybody is that the system is broken, and this is coming from my GP. That they can look online and see that my requisition is pending. They can’t get any lead times and if they call, they get kind of a nasty response,” says Mooney.

Mooney says giving patients access to an online tracking system would alleviate a lot of anxiety and take the burden off family doctors. She also says knowing how long she might have to wait would allow her to look at alternatives.

Castanet contacted Interior Health about her concerns.

“Interior Health agreed that having a system for diagnostic services that is more visible to patients directly would be helpful,” acknowledges Andrew Hughes, executive director of clinical operations.

Hughes points out that there have been some improvements. IH sends confirmation on the requisition being booked, reminder texts of appointments when booked and gives patients direct access to results through the MyHealthPortal, if they have signed up for the service. That’s on top of providing results to the referring physician and any other physicians/specialists involved in a patient’s care.

“Work to build on this to make our system more open to patients is ongoing,” he adds.

“Interior Health recognizes how stressful it is to wait for diagnosis of a potential cancer and our priority is to ensure that all patients and their physicians get results from biopsies and other diagnostic tests as quickly as possible.”

Mooney understands that she might not be the top priority, but knowing where she sits would give some peace of mind.

Interior Health says all requisitions are prioritized based on clinical presentation noted by the referring physician. Once a referral is submitted, a physician may call to receive a status update or to change the priority if required.

Target timelines for medical imaging are:

• Priority 1: within 24 hours
• Priority 2: 7 days
• Priority 3: 30 days
• Priority 4: 60 days.

IH adds that targets might not be met for priority 3 and 4 patients if there’s a large number of priority 1 and 2 requisitions. If individuals are concerned about a delay, they should consult with their family physician or specialist.

Hughes also said that during the booking process, an alternate site may be offered if there is a shorter waitlist for the exam and processing results can be done in a timely manner.

Mooney didn’t know this until she got a call from a director of clinical operations after speaking to Castanet. She was told she might be able to get in within 2-3 weeks if she travels to Kamloops.

“I asked the question, well I’ve already been waiting three weeks in Kelowna, are you telling me that Kelowna’s longer than 2-3 weeks?

“She said they had 47 patients higher priority than me right now waiting for tests.”

In the end, she was able to book an appointment this week in Kamloops.

“Why they don’t have a broader spectrum of places to send people or to have an idea, okay, who’s got the least amount? Can we shuffle some of them over there? Relieve the burden here and the wait time for those people. If they can travel, if they can make that trip. It doesn’t make sense that it’s that disjointed, that disconnected” Mooney says.

She worries about other patients who aren’t able to advocate for themselves as she did.

“I don’t want anyone else to go through this. This is terrible,” says Mooney.

“You have to follow up because there is so limited visibility. You can fall through the cracks potentially it sounds like.

“And not that I fell through the cracks. They had my requisition but they couldn’t tell me how long that was going to take.”