Only half of patients who visited the Canberra Hospital emergency department are seen within recommended times as the hospital struggles to deal with an influx of presentations.
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Less than 40 per cent of patients categorised as urgent are treated within target times, while 69 per cent of semi-urgent patients wait longer than the hospital guidelines.
According to the latest ACT Health annual report, the Canberra Hospital failed to meet waiting targets in all but two of five triage categories with 51 per cent of patients seen within the recommended time.
Calvary Hospital performed slightly better with 69 per cent of patients seen within target times. Both hospitals treated all category one patients immediately.
Overall, 59 per cent of patients at emergency department patients were seen within recommended times, which was lower than the national average of 75 per cent in 2013-14.
The government has blamed the poor performance on a record number of presentations and a 3 per cent increase in demand.
"This led to longer waiting times for some lower acuity patients," the report says. "The ACT met the target for category one and category two."
The report found that the ACT had the highest growth rate of presentations to emergency departments in 2013-14 and the trend continued last financial year.
Nearly 130,000 people attended Canberra emergency departments in 2014-15. The number of presentations has increased by 22 per cent since 2009-10.
"This equates to an average of 345 people attending the public hospital emergency departments each day," the report says.
"Over the past two years ACT public hospitals have made improvements in the median waiting time to be seen particularly for triage category three and four presentations."
The number of patients who spent less than four hours in an emergency department was 63 per cent, which was lower than the 77 per cent target but slightly higher than 2013-14 figures.
The number of patients who did not wait for care remained steady at 5 per cent, which was half the rate recorded in 2009-10.
Opposition health spokesman Jeremy Hanson said the report was dire and revealed the challenges faced by Canberra's two emergency departments.
"The percentage of patients waiting longer for elective surgery worsened in the 'urgent' category while 'non-urgent' waiting times also worsened on last year's annual report," he said.
The ACT government has committed $23 million to an extension of the Canberra Hospital emergency department, which would increase the number of beds by more than a third.
"The emergency department continues to face challenges associated with an increase in patients presenting for treatment in comparison to the 2013-14 financial year," the report says.
"The intensive care unit also faces challenges with an increase in patients requiring admissions and the acuity of patients requiring admission."
According to ACT Health, the challenges facing the emergency department will continue with increasing demand, although there was "a whole of hospital focus" to improve access to care.
The number of elective surgeries carried out in ACT hospitals increased for the fifth consecutive year with 11,875 recorded in 2014-15.
"Since 2002-03 when ACT Health provided a total of 7661 elective surgery operations, there has been a 55 per cent increase in elective surgery activity despite a 17 per cent increase in population since 2000-01," the report says.
