The quarterly health check on NSW hospitals has revealed the system is struggling under pressure while showing slight improvements in hospital ramping in the suburbs.
The state’s wait list for elective surgery has blown out to almost as high as the COVID-19 peak, with 100,235 patients in the queue.
Data from the Bureau of Health Information released today has revealed 6842 of those people are waiting longer than clinically recommended – up 220 per cent from 2023’s figures.
Paramedics are also the busiest they’ve ever been – the number of calls to triple zero and ambulance responses have both hit record highs.
Triple-zero calls are up 2.6 per cent, while ambulance responses rose 3.1 per cent to 391,370 jobs between October and December last year.
Patients also waited slightly longer for an ambulance to arrive, with the median response time for the highest priority cases sitting at 8.4 minutes, an increase of 12 seconds since 2023.
“We want to see more people in urgent care services, in GPS, in virtual care services, we know that by doing that, we can keep emergency departments for emergency cases,” Health Minister Ryan Park said.
In a positive sign, some of the state’s busiest hospitals have had reductions in ambulance ramping.
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St George Hospital saw a 25 per cent improvement in the number of patients being transferred from an ambulance to a bed within 30 minutes.
Blacktown Hospital had a 23 per cent improvement, Campbelltown 9 per cent, and Liverpool 7.2 per cent.
“We are very, very pleased with some of the ramping figures, but we know we’ve got a long way to go and we know across the system there’s a lot more work to do,” Park said.
Pressure on emergency departments, though, remains high, and a total of 67,902 patients left EDs without receiving treatment – up 32 per cent since 2019.
One in five of these patients returned to the same or another emergency department within three days, putting even more stress on the system.
