Patients in southwest wait up to 55 minutes longer in emergency than rest of state

Patients in the southwest are waiting up to 55 minutes longer in hospital emergency departments than the NSW average - and a surge in hospital admissions could be the reason.

A surge in hospital admissions has seen patients in the southwest are waiting up to 55 minutes longer in hospital emergency departments than the NSW average.

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Patients in the southwest are waiting up to 55 minutes longer in hospital emergency departments than the NSW average.

According to the Bureau of Health Information’s latest quarterly report, the median time spent in emergency across NSW was two hours and 46 minutes from April to June 2017.

Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital’s median wait time was three hours and 11 minutes and 27.2 per cent of patients waited over four hours to be treated.

At Liverpool Hospital, patients were left waiting three hours and 41 minutes and at Fairfield Hospital the average wait time was three hours and five minutes.

Patients at Fairfield Hospital waited three hours and five minutes on average for treatment.

Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital acting general manager Linda Campbell said one of the main reasons for the lengthy wait-times was that a lot of people were coming to emergency when they should be going to a GP.

“More than a third of patients who attended ED — 35.3 per cent — presented with non-urgent or semi-urgent problems, including cuts or abrasion, sprained ankles, influenza and earaches,” Ms Campbell said.

“We would encourage those patients who do not have an urgent medical problem to first seek help from their GP before coming to hospital.”

Also putting pressure on hospitals is the jump in patient presentations.

Over 42,000 patients went through emergency doors at Fairfield, Liverpool and Bankstown between April and June.

NSW Shadow Health Minister Walt Secord says the health system is under “enormous pressure”.

In NSW there were 663,942 public hospital emergency presentations in the last quarter — the highest ever recorded for this quarter and up 4.2 per cent from the same period last year.

NSW Shadow Health Minister Walt Secord said the health system is under “enormous pressure”.

“Patients are flooding emergency department because they cannot get into a GP’s practice or they are unable to pay extra for a GP,” Mr Secord said.

“In desperation, families on tight budgets are turning to emergency departments.”

At Bankstown strategies like having a Clinical Initiatives Nurse within the ED waiting area to commence treatments have helped bring the response time down from four hours and 24 minutes — the median wait time in 2010.