The quarter has seen an increase in attendance for the Goulburn Base Hospital emergency department but a decrease in waiting times according to the Bureau of Health Information (BHI) Healthcare report.
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A total of 4,301 people accessed the emergency department between April and June.
In comparison to last year, waiting times for for emergency (460), urgent (1696), semi-urgent (1697) and non-urgent (235) cases all decreased.
The largest change was recorded for semi-urgent cases, with a jump from 27 to 19 median minutes despite increasing from 1489 to 1697 patients in comparison to last year.
“This is encouraging news for Goulburn Health Service, which is committed to providing individual care that is timely, safe, effective and appropriate, and as positive an experience for the patient as possible,” Cluster General Manager Northern, Denis Thomas said.
A total of 815 people arrived via an ambulance during the quarter. The median ambulatory travel time was 12 minutes with 90 per cent arriving within 26 minutes.
Last year, 90 pc of patients took 33 minutes to travel to the hospital in an ambulance.
Out of the 4,301 hospital patients, 70.1 pc were treated and discharged and 23.0 pc were treated and admitted to the hospital.
General (148) and orthopedic (100) were the two most popular types of surgery.
For patients ready for surgery and on the waiting list only six were treated, leaving 642 still on the list.
There are 13 patients ready for elective surgery which have been on the waiting list for longer than 12 months, an increase from five in the same time last year.
“While we are seeing over a 4 per cent increase in the number of people presenting to the Emergency Department, 76.1 per cent of patients started their treatment within clinically recommended guidelines.
"This is a 15.2 percentage point improvement compared to the same quarter last year, and is a testament to the patient centred care being provided by hospital staff,” Mr Thomas said.
“Elective Surgery statistics from the report are also positive for Goulburn. We performed 414 elective operations between April and June, and the median wait time across all three urgency categories was reduced when compared to the same quarter last year,” he said.
Read the full report here.
