More emergency department patients at Shoalhaven District Hospital were treated on time in the July to September 2018 quarter, compared to the same quarter last year, according to the latest figures.
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The Bureau of Health Information (BHI) this week released its Healthcare Quarterly report, which showed there were 9675 presentations to the emergency department, down 2 per cent on the previous year.
Of those patients, more than 63.1 per cent were treated on time, up more than 4 per cent on the same period last year.
Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District executive director of clinical operations Margaret Martin welcomed the report, which showed 89 per cent of the 972 elective surgery procedures, were completed within clinically appropriate timeframes.
“Every one of the 810 urgent surgeries [across the health district] were completed on time, and 94.1 per cent or 937 semi-urgent surgeries were completed on time,” she said.
“Almost 90 per cent (88.6 per cent) of 1,276 patients had their non-urgent surgery done on time.”
According to the report, the median time to treatment for emergency patients was 11 minutes, down a minute from last year’s figures.
Time to treatment for urgent patients and semi-urgent patients has decreased. Urgent times have fallen below the median of last year’s 31 minutes to 29 minutes, while semi-urgent wait times is 34 minutes, a decrease from last year’s 39 minutes.
BHI chief executive Dr Diane Watson said the latest issue of Healthcare Quarterly compares results from July to September 2018, when there was a relatively mild flu season, to the same quarter in 2017, when there was a severe flu season.
“While we need to take this year’s milder flu season into consideration when looking at these results, it is still encouraging to see results at NSW level have improved compared with the same quarter last year,” Dr Watson said.
Despite a slower flu season, only 63.9 per cent of patients left the Shoalhaven emergency department within four hours of presentation, an increase on the previous year.