Between January and March this year public hospitalsacross NSW have experienced the busiest period of emergency department activityon record, with the early start to the flu season already making its impactfelt.
The latest independent quarterly Bureau of Health Information figures onpublic hospital performance, released today, shows more than 750,000 patients presented to emergency departmentsduring January to March 2019.
NSW Health DeputySecretary Susan Pearce said this was an increase of around 42,000 people, a 5.9 per cent increase from the samequarter in 2018 and higher than any previous quarter on record.
"While manypeople will remember the 2017 winter, our worst flu season on record, we sawthousands more patients this quarter, and these figures do not even show thefull winter months," Ms Pearce said.
Ms Pearce saiddespite the challenges posed by the record rise in patients, hospitalperformances across the state maintained a high standard, with nearlythree-quarters of emergency department patients, 543,000 people, startingtreatment on time.
"While thereis always room for improvement, it was pleasing to see that some of ourhospitals improved their performance despite large increases in presentationsand very unwell patients".
"These results are a testament to the efforts of our doctors, nurses andparamedics, but NSW Healthcontinues to urge people to get their flu shots to protect them during the colddays ahead, because it's not too late, and the flu jab is an important step inreducing the risk of succumbing to the potentially lethal virus," she said.
NSW Ambulance experienceda very busy quarter, responding to close to 307,000 responses, up by 10.2 percent or an additional 28,359 responses, on 2018's quarter.
Almost 170,000patients in emergency departments arrived by ambulance, also a 10 per centincrease, and almost 90 per cent (88.8 per cent) were transferred fromparamedics to hospital staff within the benchmark time of 30 minutes.
Ms Pearce said elective surgery also continued to lead the nation inelective surgery performance, with 96.4 per cent of all elective surgeries wereperformed within recommended time frames.
In 2018-19, the NSW Government is investing a record $22.9 billion inhealth, an increase of $1.1 billion on the previous financial year. Thisincludes $19.2 billion towards improving services in hospitals in NSW thisyear.
An investment of $759 million for acute patient services will fund anadditional 40,000 emergency department attendances in addition to 2.9 millionalready provided and an extra 3,200 elective surgeries in addition to the225,500 already provided.
The NSW Government's record $1 billion 2018-19 NSW Ambulance budgetincludes a commitment to provide an additional 700 paramedics and 50 TripleZero control centre staff over the next four years.
The 2018-19 Budgetalso added 1,370 health staff, including 950 nurses and midwives, 300 medicalpractitioners and 120 allied health professionals - resulting in a recordfrontline clinical and clinical support staff of over 105,000.
