Northern Beaches Hospital performing better than most of its peers, according to latest figures
The boss of Northern Beaches Hospital hopes the latest independent performance report will silence critics, with it showing much-improved statistics.
The latest independent health report shows Northern Beaches Hospital has greatly improved and is performing above average compared with similar hospitals.
When asked by the Manly Daily whether the figures in the Bureau of Health Information’s quarterly report may silence the hospital’s critics, chief executive Andrew Newton said he hoped so.
The privately operated Frenchs Forest hospital which opened in October last year has had a tough first 12 months, but the latest statistics show it has made improvements across the board.
“We performed well in all areas of the hospital from treatment times in Emergency Department to elective surgeries,” Mr Newton said.
“It’s a great credit to the hard work of staff across the hospital and I’m very proud of these achievements.”
However, Hilary Rowell, senior director of BHI said the results come with a caution because of challenges with the collection of data.
She said the BHI would be reviewing the new information system at the hospital before the next quarter where it hoped to remove the caution from the results.
However, she said the results from this quarter showed the hospital’s performance was “entirely respectable”.
“What the report shows is that its performance is better compared with hospitals in its peer group,” Ms Rowell said.
Emergency Department Director Dr Andrew Ratchford said the emergency department had improved its performance in all areas.
More than two thirds of emergency patients started treatment on time at Northern Beaches Hospital, compared to 59.7 per cent in the January to March quarter and 67.9 per cent in the April to June quarter.
Guidelines state treatment for emergencies should begin within 10 minutes; for urgent cases it is 30 minutes; semi-urgent 60 minutes and non-urgent 120 minutes.
Treatment times improved across all categories compared with previous reports and 73.8 per cent of patients left ED within the recommended four hours of arriving.
“Overall, 15,403 people presented to the emergency department in the last quarter with 4,220 people arriving by ambulance,” Dr Ratchford said.
“We performed above target of 90 per cent for ambulance transfers with 99.2 per cent of patients transferred from ambulance to emergency department staff within 30 minutes.
“These improvements are due to the hard work of the dedicated doctors, nurses and support staff in the emergency department.”
In the July to September quarter, 7113 patients were admitted to Northern Beaches Hospital including 6,894 acute cases.
The average length of stay at the hospital was 2.4 days during the quarter.
The hospital’s maternity unit also delivered 373 babies between July and September.
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