{"id":894942,"date":"2026-09-17T05:20:20","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T05:20:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/894942\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T05:20:20","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T05:20:20","slug":"hospital-apologises-after-critical-gp-referrals-were-left-in-a-box-for-more-than-a-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/894942\/","title":{"rendered":"Hospital apologises after critical GP referrals were left in a box for more than a year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A hospital that still relies on paper records has apologised after critical GP referrals were left in a box untouched for more than a year, reportedly leading to at least one death.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mildura Base Public Hospital reported the incident as a sentinel event to healthcare safety watchdog Safer Care Victoria earlier this month, after discovering the forgotten documents.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The diagnosis of the patient who died has not been revealed, but according to media reports, the referrals related to investigations for possible cancer, including colonoscopies.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The hospital\u2019s acting CEO Matthew Jukes declined to comment on specific patient details but said that the hospital had strengthened its processes for receiving, tracking and managing referrals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A hospital that still relies on paper records has apologised after critical GP referrals were left in a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":894943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,137,500],"class_list":["post-894942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=894942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/894943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=894942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=894942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=894942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}