Gold Coast University Hospital called an emergency meeting last week and upped the outsourcing of X-rays, CT scans and ultrasounds to the private sector amid concerns the imaging delays could put patients at risk.
Hospital chiefs and the state health minister rushed to assure patients that everything was being done to clear the more than 54,000 images, which could take up to three months.
"Obviously a backlog of that size is really concerning and it is unacceptable," Health Minister Shannon Fentiman told reporters on Thursday.
"But my main message today is to any patients at the Gold Coast, I want them to know that all scans are reviewed by senior clinicians."
The minister said she had been advised there were no similar backlogs elsewhere in the state.
She blamed the problem on medical workforce shortages that were a problem around the world, and changes in Medicare incentives that made working in the private system more attractive for radiologists.
The minister indicated she would speak with federal counterparts about luring radiologists back to the public system.
Gold Coast Health chief executive Ron Calvert said a jump in number of imaging requests and the difficulty in hanging on to radiologists had long been a concern.
"Explosion in demand has been concerning us for some time and we've been implementing various approaches to try to make sure that it doesn't get out of hand," Mr Calvert told reporters.
He said the backlog recently got to the point where the hospital had to "up the scale" of outsourcing imaging services to the private sector.
Mr Calvert said he called a meeting last week to discuss the surge in demand and investigate why there was such high demand.
Another problem was changes in 2021 to the National Health Reform Agreement that slashed the pay of radiologists at public hospitals.
"At one point we were facing the prospect of losing nearly all of our radiologists, the impact was going to be so severe," Mr Calvert said.
The hospital lost the equivalent of eight full-time radiologists and was five short of what was needed, he said.
Gold Coast Health executive director of medical services and clinical governance Kellie Wren said it was "exceedingly rare" for patients to be put at risk by unprocessed scans.
Australian Medical Association state president Maria Boulton said staff she had spoken to "feel quite disenfranchised" due to a lack of staff and resources.
"There's no doubt that people working in the hospital are doing the best they can," Dr Boulton said.
"But if you're under-resourced, underfunded and understaffed, it's very hard to keep up when you're working in a busy environment."
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