A sexual assault victim was forced to wait nine hours for a forensic medical examination by a doctor at a Queensland hospital.
The Liberal National Party says it's a damning indictment on the state's health system, while the government says work is underway to fix any failures.
An auditor-general report has uncovered at least 49 instances where rape victims waited longer than 10 minutes to see a health professional after presenting at hospital, with the potential for the number to be higher given a lack of data.
In one case, police tried to organise a rape testing kit for a woman at four different hospitals but none were able to perform one for more than 12 hours.
Sexual assault victims are meant to undergo an "approved clinical care pathway" within 10 minutes of presenting at a hospital following recommendations made by a 2018-19 auditor-general report and a 2023 directive from the health minister.
However, the directive doesn't specify whether patients should undergo a rape kit within 10 minutes.
Auditor-General Rachel Vagg found hospitals across the state had adopted different approaches, with some deeming clinical care as seeing a social worker or a nurse for basic wellbeing checks.
Delays continued for rape kit examinations to be performed with one hospital recording an average wait time of three hours between January and March.
Ms Vagg identified one case where a patient waited nine hours before a doctor started the required examination due to staffing shortages.
Only one of the four catchments - Gold Coast, Metro North, Children's Health Queensland, and North West - reported wait times, meaning Ms Vagg could not determine whether it was an isolated case.
Queensland Health found in 2023 more than half of the state's hospitals had no dedicated forensic examiner and Ms Vagg's report revealed there was no improvement.
Despite all doctors being able to perform rape kit examinations, the state's health body still does not know how many active and dedicated examiners there are.
NSW requires every health district to have a 24-hour sexual health service available with a forensic examiner.
Ms Vagg said the health system had improved its sexual assault services since 2018 but it still had more to do.
Child victims required more services and there was a need for greater oversight of the number of forensic examiners and statewide reporting tools for wait times, the report found.
Queensland Health has committed to introducing new care and reporting frameworks by the end of 2025.
Opposition sexual violence spokeswoman Amanda Camm said the report revealed the health system remained under immense strain, to the detriment of rape victims.
"This is utterly unforgivable and more proof nothing will change unless we change the government," she said on Monday.
Premier Steven Miles said improving sexual assault responses in hospitals had been a priority for his government since the 2019 report.
"You'll recall how concerned I was to discover that may, many parts of the state couldn't do post-rape forensic investigations, and we've moved to ensure that the kits are available right across the state and to do more training," he said.
"Understandably, there are health professionals who would prefer not to do those tests, but it's really important for Queenslanders that they're available."
The number of reported sexual assaults rose by 11 per cent across Australia in 2023 with Queensland recording the sharpest increase of 14 per cent, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
