Emergency departments provide care for patients who may have an urgent need for medical, surgical or other care. Emergency departments may also provide services for patients returning for further care, or for patients waiting to be admitted to a ward. About one in four presentations to emergency departments ends with the patient being admitted to hospital.
Public hospitals provide most emergency department services. Private hospitals provided about 501,000 emergency department services in 2008–09 (ABS 2010), about 6% of the total for that year.
Public hospitals
There were about 7.4 million accident and emergency visits to public hospitals in 2009–10. Between 2005–06 and 2009–10, they increased by an average of 4.0% per year (Figure 12).
These visits include both those to formal emergency departments in larger hospitals and those to smaller hospitals (commonly in more remote areas) with other arrangements for providing accident and emergency services.
Figure 12: Public hospital accident and emergency visits, 2005–06 to 2009–10
