If you turn up at emergency at Wollongong Hospital, there's a roughly one in two chance you'll be left waiting more than four hours to leave the department.
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And, according to data being released on Wednesday, ten per cent of patients didn't leave the ED until 11 hours and 25 minutes after their arrival.
The latest quarterly figures from the Bureau of Health Information confirm what nurses, paramedics, doctors and patients have been saying: that the hospital system has been under enormous strain.
The data from October to December 2021 shows that 49.4 per cent of patients at Wollongong ED waited for longer than the state benchmark of four hours.
This was the sixth worst result in the state, but represented an improvement from the same time in 2020.
On average, people left the ED after three hours and 55 minutes, which was nine minutes quicker than the average from October to December 2020 but longer than the average time for similar hospitals across the state.
The Wollongong figures also show that the number of people attending the emergency department dropped compared to the previous year, but that admissions to hospital rose.
Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District Executive Director of Clinical Operations Margaret Martin said the data showed that emergency department activity had returned to "prepandemic levels".
"There were 41,330 attendances in the District's EDs, a decrease of 6.1 per cent, or 2,685 fewer attendances, compared with the same period in 2020," she said. "At an individual hospital level, Wollongong Hospital ED had 18,427 attendances during October to December 2021, a decrease of 3.4 per cent, or 658 fewer attendances..."
She said the health district had focused on "business-as-usual activity" in hospitals, as well as the resumption of non-urgent elective surgery, while continuing to respond to pressures of COVID-19.
"The emergence of the Omicron variant and the rapid increase in cases at the end of December required the District to once again re-focus its efforts on the pandemic response and increase COVID-19 services both in hospitals and in the community," she said.
Ms Martin noted that 71.6 per cent of Wollongong ED patients started treatment on time, which was better than the average (66.8 per cent) for hospitals of a similar size.
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However, the figures also show that only 50.1% of the most serious patients, classified as "emergency" started treatment on time, a drop of 15.4 percentage points. At the top end, some emergency patients waited 26 minutes for treatment to start.
Ms Martin said the health district was focused on improving ED performance through "the ongoing review of ED and inpatient models of care to improve patient flow in our hospitals and incorporate the safe care of suspected and confirmed COVID-19 patients".
Keira MP and Labor's Health spokesman said the figures showed the health care system was under continued pressure.
"From Wollongong to Shellharbour and the Shoalhaven, all three major hospitals in the Illawarra continue to show they are under resourced and struggling to cope with increased demand," he said.
"Our frontline healthcare workers do such an incredible job particularly with the challenges they have faced over the last few years.
"But they need the Government to listen to them because we cannot expect them to continue to work with ongoing staff shortages especially as we begin preparations for what could be another challenging winter period."
"We need urgent action to address this crisis, there must be no excuses and no delays.
"Patients across the Illawarra are waiting longer for an ambulance, longer in the emergency department and longer for elective surgery."
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