Westmead Hospital emergency department waiting times increase
A horror flu season has been blamed for almost 20,000 patients flooding Westmead Hospital’s emergency department over the past quarter.
Parramatta
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Longer waiting times at Westmead Hospital’s emergency department meant 42.3 per cent of patients were forced to wait more than four hours, Bureau of Health Information data shows.
Figures from April to June show waiting lists for surgery have risen and ambulance response times have slowed across the state, putting the health system under “enormous pressure”.
Opposition health spokesman Ryan Park said 84,131 patients state wide waited for surgery. The latest figure breaks the record set last quarter, when the waiting list eclipsed 80,000 patients for the first time.
Mr Park said the patients were waiting for non-urgent procedures such as cataract removal, knee and hip replacements.
Of those, 10 per cent were waiting longer than 359 days for their surgery.
By comparison, in April 2011, there were 66,000 patients waiting for elective surgery in NSW.
Ambulance response times in all categories — including P1A (highest priority) got slower with a record 309,734 call-outs while 10 per cent of P2 urgent patients waited longer than 53 minutes.
While surgery wait lists and ambulance response times have grown, patients are also spending longer waiting in emergency departments.
A total of 29.4 per cent of patients spent more than four hours in emergency departments, with 10 per cent of patients waiting longer than seven hours and 35 minutes.
Figures also show that the percentage of emergency patients whose treatment started within the recommended time frame had dropped across all triage categories compared to the same period in 2018.
Treatment start times for emergency patients fell well short of the recommended 80 per cent within 10 minutes, with only 62.5 per cent of these patients starting treatment in this frame.
At Westmead Hospital, the emergency department had 19,243 presentations, an increase of 264 patients.
This represented a 1.4 per cent rise on the same quarter in 2018 and included a 30 per cent rise in non-urgent presentations.
Westmead Hospital general manager Brett Thompson said the state’s longest flu season since the 2009 pandemic had influenced the amount of patient presentations to emergency departments.
But Mr Thompson said the proportion of emergency and urgent patients who started their treatment on time improved by nine per cent and 9.8 per cent respectively.
The overall proportion of patients starting their treatment on time rose by 4.2 per cent to 54.8 per cent.
He said Western Sydney Health District “remains committed to improving our result with further innovation and investment, including recently employing more triage nurses in Westmead ED”.
Mr Park slammed the government for neglecting hospitals.
“The Premier told the people of NSW that they could have it all under the Liberals before the last election,’’ he said.
“Instead our hospitals are now at breaking point thanks to the government’s neglect and patient care will decline as a result.”
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