A new website where people can see how many patients are waiting to be treated at Canberra's emergency departments has been unveiled at a meetingto identify tactics to ease the growing pressure on the territory's busy public hospitals.
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Senior health bosses, doctors and representatives from health services from across the ACT attended a meeting on Thursday hosted by Chief Minister Katy Gallagher to discuss the activity and challenges facing Canberra's hospital emergency departments.
The website was previewed at the meeting and it is expected to be made public in coming weeks.
Ms Gallagher said it would give people considering going to the emergency department a snapshot of what was happening at Canberra and Calvary hospitals and provide an idea of how long patients were waiting to be seen.
"One of the issues that came up today was health literacy and that was the idea that people understand what the emergency departments are for and also what other options are available, and there are increasing after-hours options for people," she said.
Ms Gallagher said emergency department visits had increased 25 per cent in the past five years, and the growth was only partly explained by population growth and the ageing population.
She said the growth in visits was placing "enormous" pressure on both Canberra and Calvary hospitals.
"Part of what we wanted to talk about is what is driving this change and what, if anything, can we do about it. If it keeps growing at this rate, it is unsustainable," Ms Gallagher said.
"There is no simple answer. A lot of ideas came today, particularly a way we engage with primary care and GP services, the ways the GPs interact with the hospital system, even the way the hospitals communicate with each other.
"Part of the reason we're dealing with this pressure is the fact that Canberrans like using their public hospitals to a greater degree perhaps than any other jurisdiction in the country."
Stuart Stapleton, director of emergency at Calvary Hospital, said the biggest challenges facing Canberra's emergency departments were "the right patients being seen at the right time by the right people making the right decisions so their quality of care is high".
He said the growth in emergency department visits was a worldwide phenomenon, but there were no clear solutions for the problem.
Canberra Hospital emergency department clinical director Michael Hall said it was critical to ensure patients turning up to emergency departments were receiving excellent care.
"The growth that we see is difficult to sustain and the continual large growth in patients puts pressure on our services,'' Dr Hall said.
''Our priority is the critically ill and we have to be careful to maintain the resources to treat those critically ill patients, so it's important that we look at the strategies and the reasons behind the overall growth in presentations.
"We have to be able to plan and look at the big picture. How many beds does the hospital need? How does the hospital want to respond to emergency."
Ms Gallagher said it was crucial to understand what was driving the growth if the ACT was to adequately plan for the delivery of health services.
"The measure really that we're focused on is the four-hour rule, and I think that's a much better way of measuring how long people are waiting and then what's happening to them through their patient journey in the hospital," she said.
As the government tries to find solutions to ease pressure on hospitals, Ms Gallagher officially opened a new nurse-led walk-in centre at the Tuggeranong Community Health Centre on Thursday. A new walk-in centre at the Belconnen Community Health Centre will open on Tuesday.
Both centres will be open between 7.30am and 10pm every day.
