A Mayfield woman who waited months for a routine appointment at the Calvary Mater Hospital said she was emotionally exhausted and upset she had to fight so hard to get a repeat prescription.
Emma Warren was diagnosed with Crohn's disease when she was 19 years old, and for the past year, the 45-year-old has has taken an immunosuppressant medication called Stelara to treat the chronic health condition.
She said Stelara is a specialist-only prescription - which means her GP cannot prescribe it, and she needs to take it every eight weeks.
Ms Warren began calling the hospital to make an appointment at the start of February, when she realised she would be using her last repeat towards the end of that month. She said she was due to have the next dose of the medication on April 20.
But getting an appointment with a gastroenterologist that could prescribe her the medication again was "unnecessarily" hard.
"The amount of time I had to put in to chase up this routine appointment was nothing like I've ever experienced before in all my time of being unwell," she said.
As her medication deadline loomed closer, Ms Warren became more and more distressed. She emailed Tim Crakanthorp's office because she felt she was running out of options.
"I got so frustrated after another phone call where they said they could see it written next to my name that I needed to be seen in April: 'But we still don't have an appointment for you'," she said.
She got an appointment for April 20, which was shifted to April 21 - the day after she was supposed to take the medication. Ms Warren said due to an onerous Medicare approvals process it took almost two weeks after the appointment before she had the medication in her hands.
"On an individual level, the nurses, the admin staff, the doctors - they routinely go above and beyond," she said. "But they are dealing with a system that's underfunded and under-resourced and the staff are overstretched."
A Hunter New England Health spokesperson said one of the hospital's gastroenterologists took a period of "unexpected leave", which meant some appointments had to be rescheduled.
"We understand this is frustrating and apologise to those patients affected," she said. "We re-booked those appointments as soon as possible and have recruited a specialist to fill the short-term vacancy.
"We have a temporary locum in place while we wait for the new specialist to start soon."
