How NT hospitals median emergency department wait times reached 29 min

Emergency department waiting rooms across the Territory are filling up, with a number of factors to blame. See which hospital you’ll be waiting longest at.

Territorians are spending longer in emergency department waiting rooms than previous years as hospitals continue to deal with a lack of staff and resources.

The median wait time for Northern Territory hospitals in 2021/22 was 29 minutes, up from the national average of 20 minutes.

It’s the longest average wait time the NT has experienced since 2018.

Australasian College for Emergency Medicine president elect Dr Stephen Gourley said the latest data was disappointing but “not unexpected”.

“We really want to be providing the best care that we possibly can and it’s clear that the demand is exceeding the ability to provide the service,” he said.

Dr Stephen Gourley from ACEM said there were many factors affecting the median wait times of emergency departments. Picture: Supplied

Dr Gourley said the issues that lead to the increase were “multifactorial”.

“There’s a worldwide shortage of nurses and medical staff and the NT is not immune to that.

“We’re also losing medical and nursing staff that have to go out on seven days of quarantine leave with Covid.

“The next issue is just the overall demand for services is increasing, and I suppose one of the big issues is, as people live longer, with more chronic health care needs to keep people well.

Dr Gourley said the specific health needs of the population in places like Alice Springs, where he is based, was also making a difference.

“When you’re looking at Alice Springs we’ve got a very high indigenous population, and just through the disease of poverty, those social determinants of health can cause a lot of these issues,” he said.

He also said it came down to resources of the health system, with more people coming to ED rather than paying to go and see a doctor.

“Both Darwin and Alice Springs in particular, haven’t really expanded their bed stock but populations have grown. so each acute bed is becoming a scarcer and scarcer resource,” he said.

“We’re getting a lot of people coming in the doors that need see the GP that we can sort through, but there’s also a lot of people that come through the doors that need that hospital bed, but the hospital beds aren’t available so they back up in the emergency department — so it’s almost like a perfect storm.”

But not all six Territory emergency departments had seen increasing wait times.

According to the data, Alice Springs Hospital had performed the best, with 80 per cent of their patients seen on time while Tennant Creek and Gove both recorded 78 per cent of patients seen on time.

Just 48 per cent of patients at the emergency department of Royal Darwin Hospital were seen within the recommended time frame. Picture: Che Chorley

Royal Darwin Hospital however recorded 48 per cent of patients receiving treatment within the recommended time.

Those figures took the Northern Territory median ‘seen on time’ rate to 57 per cent, against Australia’s median percentage of 67 per cent.

Dr Gourley, who will take the reins of the ACEM in November, said changing the way the system was funded could be a solution.

“One of the big drivers of health care dysfunction is the way it’s funded,” he said.

“I think how we fund and arrange healthcare needs a reboot, we need to go back and actually just redesign it from ground up and question everything.”

Originally published as How NT hospitals median emergency department wait times reached 29 min