Long ambulance and hospital wait times as demand remains "historically high"

The Bureau of Health Information (BHI)'s latest Healthcare Quarterly report tracked activity and performance for public health services across NSW between April and June of this year.

BHI Acting Chief Executive Hilary Rowell said, across the state, patients typically waited longer for hospital and ambulance services over the quarter, as activity remained at "historically high" levels.

"NSW healthcare services continued to experience pressures in April to June, with sustained COVID-19 case numbers and the arrival of the winter flu season," she said.

Throughout the quarter, Bathurst Health Service's emergency room saw 6864 presentations, with 74.8 per cent of them treated on time, down 6.5 per cent from the same period last year.

Bathurst's emergency department performed worse than the Western NSW Health District as a whole, where only 80.3 percent of patients started treatment on time.

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Dubbo Hospital's emergency department performed slightly better, with 81.6 per cent of its 10,306 patients starting treatment on time, while in Orange only 69.9 percent of the 8381 people who attended the emergency room were seen on time (down 6.8 percent from last year).

Across NSW, only six in 10 patients (62.8 per cent) were seen on time, the lowest of any quarter since BHI began reporting in 2010.

"Our additional analysis shows that one in five patients who leave without, or before completing treatment, tend to re-present to an ED within three days," said Ms Rowell.

Ambulance services in Bathurst responded to 2394 calls for help in the April to June quarter, up three per cent compared to the same time last year.

The median time for an ambulance to respond to an emergency in Bathurst was 11 minutes and, for urgent calls, 17 minutes, deemed the quickest in the state.

In both Orange and Dubbo, the median response time was 12 minutes.

Slower ambulance response times was a trend across the state with half of the 175,892 ambulance responses to emergency patients taking more than 16.3 minutes - the longest since 2010.

"Demand for ambulance responses remained high, particularly for patients requiring an emergency (P1) response, and patients waited longer for an ambulance than in any quarter since BHI began reporting in 2010," said Ms Rowell.

When it comes to elective surgeries, there were 750 patients on the waitlist (down three per cent from last year) in Bathurst by the end of the quarter, compared to 1467 in Orange and 1868 in Dubbo.

Bathurst's wait time is 359 days for non-urgent surgery, while Orange's is 337 days and Dubbo patients have to wait 369 days.

This trend is consistent across NSW, with half of all patients across the state waiting 339 days for non-urgent surgery.

For urgent surgery, the median wait time in Bathurst is 18 days, while semi-urgent surgery is 45 days.

Bathurst's wait time for urgent surgery is slightly higher than in Dubbo (14 days) and Orange (15 days), but was lower than both regional centres for semi-urgent surgery, with patients in Orange waiting 57 days and those in Dubbo waiting 69 days.

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