The waiting times in public hospitals can be months especially in Melbourne – for Category 2 and 3 patients.  A colleague who works in a public hospital in the western suburds says he hardly sees any Category 2 or 3 patients getting onto his endoscopy list.

In smaller country public hospitals, the waiting list is thankfully shorter.  This is only fair as country patients  do not usually have access to a local private endoscopy centre(where one can pay a small centre fee to have the endoscopy with the endoscopist fees’ bulk billed to Medicare)