Patients presenting to emergency departments across the Nepean Blue Mountains Local District are being treated and leaving much more quickly than they were last year, according to the 2014 Bureau of Health Information (BHI) hospital quarterly report.
The report also revealed major improvements in elective surgery wait times at Hawkesbury District Health Service (HDHS) across all categories.
In comparison to last year, there has been a huge 45 per cent improvement in the ‘semi-urgent’ surgery category as well as 29 and 18 per cent improvement for non-urgent and urgent elective surgery wait times.
HDHS is now nearing perfect results across all elective surgery categories.
Statewide, more than 80 per cent of emergency patients requiring treatment within 10 minutes were seen on time in public hospitals as revealed by a report released last month by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW).
The figure shows a rise from 70 per cent in 2009-10 to 75 per cent in 2013-14.
In addition, almost 100 per cent of resuscitation patients who required treatment immediately were seen on time.
AIHW spokesperson, David Braddock, said the statistics show major improvements in the system.
‘‘In 2013-14, 50 per cent of patients received treatment by a medical officer or nurse within 18 minutes of presenting to the emergency department and 90 per cent received treatment within 93 minutes,’’ Mr Braddock said.
‘‘In comparison to 2009-10, 50 per cent of patients received treatment within 23 minutes of presentation, and 90 per cent within 115 minutes.’’
Nationally, there were almost 7.2 millon presentations to public hospital emergency departments in 2013-14 — approximately 19,700 presentations a day.
‘‘We have seen about a seven per cent rise since the previous year, when about 6.7 million presentations were recorded overall,’’ Mr Braddock said. ‘‘This in part reflects an increase in the number of hospitals reporting.’’
Of these visits, 73 per cent were completed in four hours or less, an increase of nine per cent.
