Quarterly snapshot of NSW hospital performance shows improvement
The latest report from the Bureau of Health Information, Hospital Quarterly (April to June 2014) shows NSW public hospitals are continuing to improve in emergency department performance.
Chief Executive of the Bureau of Health Information, Dr Jean-Frederic Levesque, said the volume of services that NSW public hospitals provided has increased during the quarter.
“Hospitals recorded two percent more admitted patient episodes and three percent more patients visiting emergency departments, although elective surgeries are stable compared to the same quarter one year ago,” Dr Levesque said.
“The report shows hospitals have improved against most performance measures. The times that the majority of patients leave the emergency department have decreased and are the lowest for this quarter over the past five years.
“The average time that admitted patients are spending in hospital is unchanged compared with the same quarter last year.”
More than 600,000 patients visited an emergency department (ED). This is the highestnumber of visits for this quarter in two years:
- For patients who arrived by ambulance, 85% had their care transferred from ambulance to hospital staff within 30 minutes
- The time that patients waited to start treatment across all urgency categories was the same or shorter compared to the same quarter last year
- The percent of patients who left EDs within four hours reached 72%, an improvement of 6 percentage points compared to the same quarter last year. Most hospitals that were below the 72% mark had an increase in the proportion of patients who left within four hours.
Nearly 55,000 elective surgeries were performed in public hospitals, 724 less surgeries than the same quarter last year. Across NSW, 97% of patients received their surgery within the recommended time period, similar to performance during the same quarter last year:
- The percentage of urgent surgery performed on time was 100%
- The percentage of semi-urgent performed on time was 97%
- The percentage of non-urgent performed on time was 95%.
This information is available on BHI’s online portal Healthcare Observer, including individual performance profiles for more than 80 NSW public hospitals at www.bhi.nsw.gov.au