A 47-year-old woman receiving care at a public eye clinic in South Australia says her experience has been so poor she is choosing to go blind in one eye.
For the past year Cindy Dunn has been injected with medication in both of her eyes every month at the Modbury Hospital Outpatient Eye Clinic.
Ms Dunn told 891 ABC Adelaide she waited five years for her first appointment.
At her last six appointments, which were scheduled in the afternoons, Ms Dunn said she would wait for more than two hours, only to be sent home.
“Waiting all that time to be told, ‘Sorry, we don’t have enough injections, you won’t be having your eye injection today,'” she said.
Ms Dunn said she had complained to a nurse unit manager and a liaison officer.
“They told me that they only allocated 10 injections [for the] outpatients’ clinic per day … they’re seeing up to 25 patients a day, so it’s a very unfair system,” she said.
“I feel for the doctors and nurses. They are so overworked and they’re seeing too many patients than what they can handle.”
Cindy Dunn has been receiving eye treatment at the Modbury Hospital Outpatient Eye Clinic. (ABC News)
Ms Dunn says she has type 1 diabetes and macular edema, and that the medication helped to treat the build-up of fluid.
Without private health insurance “because of the cost of living” and feeling “traumatised” by her experience, Ms Dunn has made the “difficult decision” to not return for the vision-saving treatment.
“I’ll go blind in the right eye … that’s the only choice I have.”
Apology issued
The Northern Adelaide Local Health Network (NALHN) is responsible for the Modbury Hospital Outpatient Eye Clinic.
NALHN chief executive Karen Puvogel said it had been in contact with Ms Dunn “in the past week about her concerns” and “will continue to engage with her”.
“It’s important that patients have access to the care they need in a timely manner and we sincerely apologise to Ms Dunn that it wasn’t her experience,” she said.
“Modbury Hospital closely monitors medication stock and sources ad-hoc doses in and out of hours when needed.
“This was a one-off occurrence for this patient and is not a frequent problem for the hospital.”
NALHN chief executive Karen Puvogel has apologised to Cindy Dunn. (ABC News)
Ms Puvogel said the median wait-time for an ophthalmology outpatient appointment at Modbury Hospital was 13 months and that there could be delays at the clinic on the day “due to a variety of factors”.
She said appointments took about 2.5 hours, which meant the clinic was limited in the number of patients it could see each day.
Macular Disease Foundation Australia chief executive Kathy Chapman told 891 ABC Adelaide there was high demand for free and affordable treatment.
“It’s a much more common condition than probably the health system has been ready for,” she said.
Dr Chapman said about 1.9 million Australians had symptoms of macular disease but only about 40 public hospitals in the nation offered free eye injection treatments.
“In South Australia there’s about six public hospitals out of 23 that we contacted that offer this. Compared to some other states, it can be even lower,” she said.
“If we can stop people going blind it’s a lot less for the health system to be paying than if you have people go blind and the extra supports that they need then.”
Free eye injection treatments are not widely available in Australia, doctors say. (Pexels: Ksenia Chernaya)
Ophthalmologist Paul Athanasiov said macular injections have been a “revelation” in the last 20 years.
“But we’re just struggling to keep up with the demand,” he told 891 ABC Adelaide.
Dr Athanasiov said “unfortunately” Ms Dunn was not the first patient to make a difficult decision about their vision due to the costs, but he has been working on a solution.
“We are setting up a new clinic … in North Adelaide … because it’s relatively central, to do bulk-billing injections and that’s all we’re going to do there,” he said.
“That’s not going to fix all the problems … but if we can at least alleviate some of the issue of the injection backlog, then I think that’ll help people like Ms Dunn.”