NSW emergency departments falling short on targets

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDNov 25 2010

According to the Bureau of Health Information’s latest Hospital Quarterly Figures emergency departments in New South Wales hospitals are still not meeting recommended waiting targets. The figures reveal that more than a third of patients transferred by an ambulance waited longer than the accepted 30 minutes to be taken into the care of emergency departments.

Only 69% of people with potentially life threatening cases – termed category three - were seen in the recommended time i.e. 30 minutes. The recommendation for seeing category three patients in 30 minutes is at least 75%. These numbers were 74% last quarter. Sixty-four percent of patients were transferred from an ambulance into the care of an emergency department within 30 minutes of arrival, rather than the target 90%. Last quarter this was 68%.

Bureau Director Dr Diane Watson adds that emergency admissions have rises. She said, “There’s an increase in people attending emergency departments… Most people are seen in recommended time but there is a drop in category three patients.” She explained that this report will show doctors and nurses where they can improve.

NSW Health Minister Carmel Tebbutt agreed that improvements need to be made in emergency admissions. She said, “This is people who need to be admitted from the emergency department after treatment has commenced in the emergency department, but they need to be admitted into the main part of the hospital… There does need to be improvement in the performance there and I’ve asked the department to work with those hospitals that are experiencing challenges in that area to turn that performance around.”

Among other things the report also found that number of people having elective surgery has risen to a two year high. Waiting times for patients with non-urgent elective surgery fell to 175 days - down from 205 days in the previous quarter but up from 135 days a year ago, Dr Watson said. “Waiting times for patients who received urgent and semi-urgent surgery remain relatively unchanged,” she said.

AMA Spokesman, Associate Professor, Brian Owler pointed out the increasing patient load on hospitals. He said, “What we see is that there are a lot of doctors and nurses working very hard in our public hospitals, particularly emergency departments… What the problem is is that there are not the resources to be able to deal with the patient load that comes through those emergency departments.”