New England emergency departments experiencing spike in patient numbers | Glen Innes Examiner

Armidale Hospital’s emergency department has seen a large spike in presentations since the start of the COVID pandemic.

In fact the number of emergency presentations in 2021-2022 shot up some 67.5 per cent over 2019-20’s figures.

While not necessarily COVID-related presentations, fluctuations in hospital admissions across the country throughout the pandemic have been highlighted in a new report.

Armidale’s results were among the latest batch of data released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare last week.

According to the AIHW MyHospitals data, there were 8.79million presentations to public hospital emergency departments in Australia in 2021-22, representing an average increase over the past five years of 2.3 per cent a year.

Across the whole of the Hunter New England Local Health Network, 54,340 people presenting to emergency departments (ED) were triaged as an “emergency” patient.

That’s an increase of 11.4 per cent over the previous year, and 18.4 per cent higher than 2018-19.

For reference, other ED triage categories include resuscitation, urgent, semi-urgent and non-urgent.

At Armidale Hospital in 2021-22, 1409 patients presented to the ED and were categorised as “emergency”, up from 1156 the previous year and just 841 in 2019-20.

For Inverell Hospital, there were 1191 “emergency” presentations in 2021-22, up from 975 the previous year and 780 in 2019-20.

The AIHW data also showed that over the last five years, across all triage categories, the proportion of patients nationwide “seen on time” has decreased – 67 per cent in 2021-22 as compared with 71 per cent seen on time the previous year.

However, encouragingly, Armidale Hospital appears to have bucked that trend, at least in the “emergency” triage category.

A hugely increased proportion of emergency patients were seen on time in 2021-22 – 80 per cent, up from 64 per cent the previous year and only 45 per cent in 2019-20.

For a patient triaged as “emergency”, “seen on time” is considered to be clinical care starting within 10 minutes of presenting to the emergency department.

Armidale Hospital has also improved its “seen on time” percentage of “urgent” patients to 63 per cent within the recommended 30 minutes, as opposed to 52 per cent in 2019-20.

However, that improvement only brings it back in line with the average (66 per cent) seen among hospitals considered to be in its “peer group”.

Armidale Hospital looks to have struggled to reach its “semi-urgent” patients, with 55 per cent seen on time (within 60 minutes) during 2021-22, down from 66 per cent the previous year and well below its 2021-22 peer average of 73 per cent.

Meanwhile, hospitals in Inverell, Moree, Glen Innes and Tenterfield are at or above their peer average for seeing ED patients on time across all triage categories.

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