Stephen-Smith says new figures show ED remedies are working

The ACT Government says its investment in the Territory’s emergency departments is paying dividends, with the latest performance figures showing a significant improvement on those for the previous financial year.

Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith said the improving trend in the latest Quarterly Performance Report reflected the hard work and commitment shown by staff across the ACT public health system, which for years has had to wear results that put the ACT at the bottom of the national ladder.

The new data comes as Ms Stephen-Smith joined other health ministers in calling for more Commonwealth support for their struggling health systems.

The government says that from January to March 2024, the proportion of ED presentations seen on time in the ACT was 63 per cent, up from 51 per cent across 2022-23.

For Category 3 Urgent patients, results have improved from 39.8 per cent in January to March 2022 to 52.2 per cent in January-March 2024.

The median wait time to be seen has remained low at 25 minutes.

This is a further improvement on the 36 minutes recorded across the 2022-23 financial year and a significant improvement compared to the same quarter in the previous two years of 47 and 48 minutes.

The proportion of patients who left the emergency department within four hours of presentation from January-March 2024 was 57.5 per cent, up from 48 per cent in 2022-23.

Although performance did slip from January to March, with the proportion of Urgent patients starting treatment on time falling from 57.7 to 47.9 per cent, the median wait time rising from 22 minutes to 27 minutes, and the proportion of patients leaving the ED within four hours of presentation falling from 61.5 to 55.4 per cent.

Ms Stephen-Smith said that the ACT was now around the national average for the proportion of patients leaving the ED within four hours of presentation for jurisdictions with publicly available data, and above NSW, Victoria and Tasmania.

“When compared with Principal Referral Hospitals in NSW for the same quarter, Canberra Hospital performed significantly better (58.7% v 41.7%),” she said.

“These improvements show that the key investments and reforms being implemented across the ACT public health system are having a positive impact on emergency department performance.”

Ms Stephen-Smith said Canberra Health Services would continue to focus on improvements across the whole hospital system, including an ED taskforce working to improve patient flow in and out of the ED and doubling the beds in the Acute Medical Unit (AMU) at Canberra Hospital from 12 to 24, and more beds in the short-stay Emergency Medical Unit.

She said the new Critical Services Building would open in August, providing staff and patients with access to a new state-of-the-art emergency department.

The new ED would have co-located medical imaging, a dedicated paediatric area with a separate triage and waiting room, and a separate triage for ambulance presentations.

The government continued to recruit more staff for EDs and across the hospital system.

On the elective surgery front, the government says it’s on track to reach its 2023-34 target of 15,500.

In the first quarter of 2024, 3617 procedures were performed, taking the total so far in 2023-24 to 10,979.

However, 4378 patients were added to the waiting list, while 661 were removed for reasons other than surgery.

“This is a huge effort by teams across the ACT health system, with our public and private hospitals working together to complete more surgeries to support patients,” Ms Stephen-Smith said.

“The ACT Government will continue to invest in elective surgeries to reduce wait times and ensure Canberrans can access timely and appropriate care.”

In last year’s budget, the government tipped $6.7 million into lifting the number of elective surgeries performed and reducing waiting times.

As at 24 May 2024, there were 7605 patients on the waitlist who were ready for surgery and 1363 who were not. Of those ready for care, 2019 patients were overdue, down from 2289 in early March this year.