The number of patients waiting for public elective surgery in the ACT has spiked, according to the latest quarterly statistics.
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The October to December 2018 figures - published on Sunday night - showed emergency department waiting times slightly improved in the same time period.
The ACT Health Directorate figures combined the emergency department data of Canberra Hospital and Calvary Public Hospital, so it was not possible to determine an individual hospital's performance.
While there were 353 fewer additions to the ACT's public elective surgery waiting list - down 8 per cent - the number of overdue patients waiting for their elective surgery increased by 521 - up 27 per cent.
The overall median wait time for elective surgery remained relatively stable. There was a slight drop in the non urgent wait time, which now sits at 225 days.
The report showed that while the number of acute hospital bed days was slightly down, there was an 8 per cent spike in the number of mental health overnight bed days of care from the previous quarter.
The average length of stay in hospital for mental health patients also slightly increased from 14.9 days to 15.7.
Most emergency department patient categories slightly improved their percentage of patients seen on time, except for the emergency category, which dropped 1 percentage point.
Each category - resuscitation, emergency, urgent, semi urgent and non urgent - was also either steady or slightly down on median waiting time in minutes.
The ACT Health Directorate began publishing the data last year after years plagued by data problems.
A spokeswoman said the report showed improvements in a number of key areas, such as walk-in centres and emergency departments.
"There is a lot of good work that is being done in our health services to focus on timely care, this is demonstrated by the improvements in ED performance shown in the report," she said
"However, waiting times are a challenge for all jurisdictions, including the ACT, and this is an area that our health services continue to focus on.
"Last year’s budget made significant investments to improve access to surgical care and reduce wait times and we look forward to seeing further improvements.
"The ACT government is committed to providing transparent and timely access to information about our health services.
"The quarterly performance reports are designed to provide the community a regular snapshot of our health system activity in a way that is meaningful for consumers.
"We value the work we have done with consumer groups and will continue to work on improving and expanding performance reporting.”
