Emergency Department seeing more and more patients
MORE than a third of patients at Campbelltown Hospital’s Emergency Department are waiting four or more hours for treatment.
Macarthur
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MORE than a third of patients at Campbelltown Hospital’s Emergency Department are waiting four or more hours for treatment.
That’s according to the Bureau of Health Information’s latest quarterly report from April to June.
Campbelltown Hospital has also seen a 6.7 per cent increase in the number of people presenting at the Emergency Department between April and June this year.
The report shows there has been 18,119 presentations to the Emergency Department while ambulance arrivals were also up 7.4 per cent on last year to 4849.
Despite the figures, South Western Sydney Local Health District authorities say the hospital’s emergency care has improved.
Campbelltown Hospital general manager Alison Derrett said there had been a sharp increase in non-urgent care which had increased by 361 people to 2106.
“Despite this increase in demand across the board, our staff did an outstanding job in treating 83 per cent of patients on time, an improvement of 3.8 per cent,” she said.
“Staff also achieved a 3.3 per cent improvement in the number of patients leaving the ED within four hours, up to 62.7 per cent.”
Ms Derrett encouraged people with less urgent medical issues to visit a GP.
“I would like to encourage people to only visit the ED in an emergency, especially during busy periods such as when the cooler months set in,” she said.
“We’re always here to help you but to ensure we get to those in urgent need of care as quickly as possible, minor medical issues are best dealt with by a GP.”
Campbelltown state Labor MP Greg Warren said the figures showed the hospital required more staff.
Mr Warren said the coming $632 million upgrade to Campbelltown Hospital was welcome new but needed to be followed by more staff.
Mr Warren backed calls from the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association to introduce minimum nurse to patient ratios for emergency departments.
“Labor have principled support for nurse to patient ratios,” he said.
“If you speak to the patients who are the ones experiencing the effects on the ground most will say the staff do a great job but need more human resources.
“To have people waiting four hours or more is simply not good enough and the staff need more support.”
The 2018-2019 budget for the South Western Sydney Local Health District is $1.9 billion, up $85 million on last year.