Commenting on the Southern Cancer Network audit on the 33 referrals, released yesterday, Mr Ryall said the hospital should not be waiting for these patients to contact it with concerns, but pro-actively seeking them out through their general practitioners.
The report reveals that 23 patients, found to have cancer, experienced waits in the hospital system ranging from 36 days to more than two years.
Five of the 23 were found to have secondary cancers, but apart from that mention, there is no information about at what stage cancers were diagnosed or whether some of the patients, referred between 2004 and 2009, have since died.
Four of the patients with secondary colon cancer were in a group of seven which was apparently never seen by the Colonoscopy Review Panel, which is supposed to vet all referrals.
The report gives no information about how these were missed.
"What the public wants to know is what's the story with the 33 and what's the story with the seven people, in particular," Mr Ryall said.
He said he felt for the 33 patients and those who had suffered lengthy delays.
The report also did not give enough information to show how the priority criteria were applied to the patients and whether the priority cases were dealt with appropriately.
The report shows that Otago, which has a high incidence of colorectal cancer, is offering the lowest number of publicly-funded colonoscopies in the country, at about half the national rate.
Mr Ryall said he was not sure that lifting this year's numbers by 200, to about 700, would be sufficient to raise the service's performance to that of many other areas.
He said he had asked the ministry to study the report and to work with the board on dealing with the issues it raised.
He was not calling for a broader audit of the service.
"We could spend another six months saying `problem, problem, problem', but we still wouldn't be "providing extra colonoscopies."
Mr Ryall called for an urgent report last October into concerns raised by some general practitioners who felt patients who were being denied colonoscopies, even though they had all the accepted symptoms of bowel cancer.
The audit of the 33 referrals by the Southern Cancer Network was commissioned by the board.
Board chief medical officer Richard Bunton said yesterday the board regretted the delays for the audit patients, acknowledging that there would be some "undoubted anxiety" among some patients, depending on their situation.
Management did not know who the patients were, since their identifying information had gone only to the independent audit team, so it could not give any information on their health status.
Board chief operations officer Vivian Blake invited any patients who wished to meet her and Mr Bunton to discuss concerns to make contact through their family doctor.
The cases were audited after general practitioners raised concerns last year about the number of their patients who were being denied colonoscopies.
Mr Bunton said he expected expectations of the audit were a lot higher than was realistic.
The issue of whether any harm was done to this group of patients was never going to be answered by the report.
It was a small group of patients within a large number of people referred to colonoscopies and, without taking a much broader sample, it could not be established whether the risk to the audit patients was greater than others.
He ruled out the board auditing the 2800 colonoscopy referrals done during the time relating to the 33 audited referrals.
It would be a waste of resources, since some of the information which would be gathered by doing this is being collected by the Southern Cancer Network in its bowel cancer mapping project.
This is looking at the way patients are treated throughout the South Island.
In response to questions, he agreed that the report had not met its stated objective of comparing referrals against prioritisation criteria.
The Otago Daily Times pointed out that without that information, the report did not show how prioritisation had been applied and whether criteria were used consistently.
The board expects to complete an extra 200 colonoscopies by the end of June, 150 by its own staff carrying out extra procedures through extra clinics and the board working with Southland colleagues to complete the other 50.
Ways of providing higher numbers of colonoscopies in the long term were also been considered.
Mr Bunton also praised the work of the gastroenterology team, which has been short-staffed, saying they had been doing an excellent job within the resources available and the board needed to provide them with more resources to increase capacity.
Health and Disability commissioner Ron Paterson, who expressed concern that the service was under pressure in June 2008 , had not had a chance to read the report when contacted yesterday.
Colonoscopy audit
23 of 33 patients audited had cancer.
Audited group had hospital waits for colonoscopies between 36 days and two years.
No information on how many have died.
Report fails to compare referrals against board's priority criteria.
Otago has lowest rate of publicly-funded colonoscopies.
Numbers to rise by 200 to about 700 a year.
