Toowoomba Hospital: New 2023 data reveals performance of emergency department

New data has revealed how Toowoomba Hospital’s newly-expanded emergency department is performing and the results are mixed. Check out our table here:

More than 16,000 patients went through Toowoomba Hospital’s newly-expanded emergency department in just three months, with officials saying the $11m project had eased pressure on the city’s health services.

The March quarter result is up 12 per cent on the same period from a year ago and represents the newest statistics since the extra 22 bays were added to the ED.

The Queensland Health data shows the median wait time for patients in Toowoomba was 19 minutes, with 100 per cent of category one patients seen within the recommended time of under two minutes.

However, this percentage dropped to 72 per cent for category two patients (within 10 minutes) and 58 per cent for category three patients (within 30 minutes).

Toowoomba Hospital executive director Shirley-Anne Gardiner said she was encouraged by the increased capacity.

“It’s fantastic news, we’re averaging 196 patients a day, which is significantly higher than five years ago, but we’re lucky to have the facilities now that we can cope with that kind of traffic,” she said.

“We are seeing increased demand for the people who need to be seen, including those who need lifesaving treatments.”

While the LNP has criticised ramping issues at Toowoomba Hospital this year, pointing to patients who waited nearly seven hours on a stretcher in an ambulance in November, Ms Gardiner said the data showed a clear improvement.

80 per cent of patients were transferred off the stretcher within 30 minutes during January, February and March, up 13 per cent from the same period in 2022.

“Ramping is hard but I think we do it particularly well, we’re the top of our peer hospital rankings for the number of patients that are offloaded, so we’re the best in the state out of our peer hospitals,” she said.

“We do a fantastic job of getting people off and into the ED.”

However, Ms Gardiner said bed availability at Toowoomba Hospital for the 44 per cent of patients who were admitted from the ED would remain an issue until the new campus at Baillie Henderson was built.

“We’ve only got limited beds, which is why it’s really important that we try to assess people quickly to see if they can be treated at home,” she said.

“We have great hospital-in-the-home programs and have done great work in that space particularly since Covid.”

Ms Gardiner said there had been an increase in category four and five patients at the emergency department, which were normally cases that would be seen by GPs.

“If you’re a GP case, we’ve seen people that can’t afford to go to a GP and come through the door and we do treat them in the time they need to be treated,” she said.