A patient suffering a potentially fatal heart condition has lodged a complaint with the Royal Adelaide Hospital after it twice postponed her open-heart surgery. While her surgery has now been rescheduled to Friday, she's concerned the South Australian health system is buckling under extreme pressure.
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00:00 Jennifer Harris goes to bed each night fearing she won't wake up.
00:06 The 51-year-old has a condition called mitral valve stenosis,
00:10 which causes her heart valve to thicken and fluid to build up in her lungs.
00:15 Essentially, fluid in my lungs means I can drown in my sleep.
00:19 It means I can go to bed and not wake up one morning.
00:22 Ms Harris says she was categorised as a Priority 1 patient
00:26 for a heart valve replacement in November.
00:29 She says the Royal Adelaide Hospital should have booked her in
00:32 for the elective surgery within one month.
00:35 I was booked to go in on the 9th of January.
00:38 This got delayed to the 11th and now I've been told
00:42 that I've been taken off the surgical list altogether.
00:45 So, yeah, I don't know what I'm getting my surgery now.
00:50 Since Ms Harris spoke to the ABC,
00:52 the hospital rescheduled her surgery to Friday.
00:55 It just happened to chance that we were able to secure
00:59 some additional capacity.
01:01 Ms Harris will be the second patient on that list.
01:04 Unfortunately, there are sometimes postponements that do need to occur,
01:08 but when they do occur, the hospital tries to reschedule them
01:11 as fast as possible and that's what's happened on this occasion.
01:14 There are currently 78 patients on the waiting list
01:17 for cardiothoracic surgery at the Central Adelaide Local Health Network.
01:21 Of those, 33 are overdue.
01:24 The whole system needs to be fixed
01:26 or people still need to start being a little bit clearer
01:29 or more upfront about what's going on.
01:32 The hospital says it has recently hired a new cardiothoracic surgeon
01:35 and it's in the process of recruiting another to meet demand.
01:39 [BLANK_AUDIO]