POLL: Wollongong Hospital’s emergency department is under the pump, with new figures showing four out of 10 patients wait longer than four hours to be treated and leave.
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According to the Bureau of Health Information’s (BHI) Hospital Quarterly Report, just 59 per cent of patients left the hospital’s ED within the four-hour state benchmark from April to June 2015. That’s down from 66 per cent in the same quarter last year.
BHI chief executive Dr Jean-Frederic Levesque said the proportion of patients leaving Wollongong Hospital in the timeframe was well below the state average of 73 per cent.
Wollongong, a principal referral hospital, performed fairly poorly in relation to similar-sized hospitals – with Bankstown/Lidcombe Hospital registering the best result (76 per cent) and Nepean Hospital the worst (53 per cent) in that category.
‘‘Wollongong was among a group of three hospitals in NSW which have seen an important reduction in emergency department performance in the latest quarter – the others are Nepean and Tamworth hospitals,’’ Dr Levesque said.
‘‘In Wollongong’s case, there was a seven percentage point drop in the number of patients leaving the emergency department within four hours.
‘‘However this needs to be put in the context that there was a three per cent increase in the number of emergency presentations compared to one year ago and the number of ambulance arrivals increased by seven per cent.’’
Overall 15,105 patients visited Wollongong Hospital ED in the three months, with 5254 arriving by ambulance. The median time for patients to leave the ED was three hours and 41 minutes, while some were forced to wait for over 19 hours.
Patients attending Shoalhaven Hospital’s ED also faced longer waits in the April to June quarter, with 63 per cent leaving within four hours – compared to 67 per cent in the same period in 2014. The figure for Shellharbour Hospital remained stable at 71 per cent.
Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District acting director clinical operations Suzanne Harris said the BHI report gave management ‘‘the opportunity to see what we are doing well and what areas could be improved’’.
‘‘The report confirms demand on services across the district has steadily increased, compared with the same period last year,’’ she said.
‘‘The district is seeing continued increased presentations to our emergency departments, increased patient admissions to our hospitals and increased numbers of surgical procedures.
‘‘While there are areas which need work, it is important to note that despite the sustained increases, the district’s average length of hospital stay (3.4 days) has remained unchanged and 100 per cent of elective surgery patients in the urgent category received their treatment within benchmark time.’’
Mrs Harris said the district was constantly working on new initiatives aimed at managing the continual increases in demand, while delivering services that were ‘‘safe and within clinically appropriate timeframes’’.