St George and Sutherland Hospital emergency departments performed well under intense pressure during the winter peak.
The Bureau of Health Information’s Hospital Quarterly report for July to September showed a total of more than 31,000 emergency department presentations.
St George Hospital treated 19,061 patients, an increase of 1.2 per cent on the same period last year.
For those who arrived by ambulance, the median transfer time was 12 minutes, compared with 11 minutes last year.
The median time for treatment to start on Triage 2 emergency cases, was 10 minutes, compared with 11 minutes in the same quarter last year.
For Triage 3 urgent cases, it was 27 minutes, two minutes faster than last year.
The median time for Triage 4 semi-urgent cases was 35 minutes, compared with 38 minutes last year.
However, Triage 5 non-urgent cases took longer, with a median time of 35 minutes, compared with 24 minutes a year earlier.
Just over 60 per cent of patients spent four hours or less in the emergency department, compared with 58.7 per cent in the same quarter last year.
Sutherland Hospital’s emergency department treated 12,462 patients, about the same as last year.
The time taken to start treatment fell by one to two minutes for Triage 2 cases (13 minutes) and Triage 3 (31 minutes), but increased by two to four minutes in Triage 4 (36 minutes) and Triage 5 (31 minutes).
For patients arriving by ambulance, the medium transfer time was 14 minutes, the same as last year.
