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Ultrasound

Posted By alphayy39

"Ultrasound"

About: Swan Hill District Hospital / Radiology

(as the patient),

I sent in my online referral to the Swan Hill Hospital Radiology Service. I was called by the admin staff and they were saying they had no availability and to try the private clinic or Bendigo. I received another phone call a few days after this, the admin staff stated that they are unable to complete my request and they have bought it up to the radiology manager who said they can’t do that scan.

I felt it was said in a way that it seemed that the manager was cherry picking what they wanted to do. Also just because my ultrasound is not, in my opinion, “urgent” in their mind, does not mean that it is not important. It is simply a different area of health care. After reading another Care Opinion it seems as though the extra Monday worker is not an effective solution to a long term problem.

I feel completely disregarded and like my care doesn’t matter at SHDH.

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Responses

Response from Chloe Keogh, Interim CEO, Executive Offices, Swan Hill District Health last week
We have made a change
Chloe Keogh
Interim CEO, Executive Offices,
Swan Hill District Health

Overall responsibility for the running of the health service, reports to the Board of Management. Interim for 7 months while they recruit permanently to the CEO role.

Submitted on 6/10/2025 at 11:37 AM
Published on Care Opinion Australia on 7/10/2025 at 10:13 AM

picture of Chloe Keogh

Dear alphayy39,

Thank you for writing to us about our radiology and ultrasound service. I know we have not responded to your post from last week. We are currently having a LOT of challenges with our radiology service to the community. This is due to a multitude of factors which we are working through. I am so sorry that you felt like you were disregarded by our team- this is not acceptable, and not in line with our value of compassion.

Originally, when your story came through on Care Opinion I asked that a response be generated from within the radiology unit. We are currently trying to manage a very long waiting list for scans and service. We are experiencing extreme shortage of ultrasonographers- which I believe is across the country. The clinical team are only able to manage so many scans and ultrasounds each day. The acting manager is working now through an agreed process of clinically selecting the patients for receiving a timely service. The administrative staff are having a lot of complex conversations with patients needing a service, that they cannot find space in the clinicians load to offer- and this is very frustrating and also exhausting for the administration team. So, to leave the team in radiology and their direct Executive enough time and space to keep providing a service and manage the waiting list, and to find additional staff through agencies who can come at short notice I opted to provide this initial response to you.

We are working through all of these issues and we will provide a more specific response when we can.

Again thank you for writing to us, and I hope you can appreciate the current challenges and allow us a little time to improve the current situation and service for the community. Your letter gave us the opportunity to review the "cherry picking" sense that you so clearly articulated, and we have a clinical matrix for assessing peoples urgency of scans in place now, however there are these other issues happening at the same time too which we are working through.

Kind Regards

Chloe

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