A surge in patient presentations has been accompanied by an increase in waiting times at Calvary Public Hospital's emergency department, according to figures published by the ACT Government.
An emergency department report card published yesterday showed that 54 per cent of patients at the Calvary emergency department were seen within clinically recommended timeframes, compared to 73 per cent cent in 2010-11.
More than two-thirds of patients were seen on time in the Canberra Hospital's emergency department in the year to August, up from just over half in 2010-11.
Neither of the ACT's emergency departments achieved a target of seeing 70 per cent of patients on time but 100 per cent of Category1 emergency patients were seen immediately at both hospitals.
Chief Minister and Health Minister Katy Gallagher said discussions were continuing between the Government and the operators of Calvary Hospital on emergency department performance.
''They've had about a 7 per cent increase in presentations to their hospital, whereas Canberra's had about a 3 per cent increase,'' MsGallagher said.
''That's about 10 extra patients a day coming through their ED. It may also be a data entry processing matter, because you can actually go back in the data and see the day their performance really takes a bit of a dip, and that has to be to some extent around how they're reporting their data.''
Ms Gallagher issued the report card after the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare published statistics which showed the ACT and Northern Territory had the lowest proportions of emergency department patients seen on time in Australia in 2010-11.
Ms Gallagher said that when compared with other Australian metropolitan hospitals, the ACT's emergency departments were shown to be performing well.
The AIHW statistics also showed that in 2010-11 the ACT continued to have the highest median waiting time for elective surgery in Australia.
Ms Gallagher said the median waiting time for elective surgery had declined from 76 to 57 days in the year to August. In September, there were 4202 patients on the ACT elective surgery waiting list, down 20 per cent on the same period the previous year.
Opposition health spokesman Jeremy Hanson said the ACT emergency and elective surgery waiting times were disastrous. ''When Labor took over, our waiting times for elective surgery and emergency departments were amongst the best in Australia, now they're the worst,'' he said.
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