Hospitals
Waiting times by patient demographics
Emergency department (ED) waiting time is the time elapsed for each patient from presentation to the ED to commencement of clinical care.
Waiting time statistics are presented as:
- proportion seen on time
- 50th percentile (median) waiting time (half of all people waited less than this time)
- 90th percentile waiting time (90% of people waited less than this time).
Explore the data
Explore 2024–25 ED waiting times by patient characteristics (Indigenous status and remoteness area of usual residence) in the data visualisation below.
Waiting time statistics for demographics: remoteness, sex, Indigenous status, by triage category or state and territory.
Comparisons of ED waiting times by Indigenous status and remoteness area of the patient’s usual residence should take into account that not all hospital emergency services provided in Australia are included (only those services that are provided through an emergency department that meets specific criteria), and the number of hospitals reporting to the collection varies by remoteness of the hospital.
Variation by Indigenous status
Nationally, in 2024–25:
- the proportion of presentations for First Nations people was the same as non-Indigenous Australians (67%)
- the median waiting time was 19 minutes for First Nations people and 18 minutes for non-Indigenous Australians.
Variation by remoteness of area of usual residence
- Median waiting times for emergency department presentations were longest for people living in Inner regional areas (19 minutes) and shortest for those living in Outer regional areas (17 minutes).
- The largest differences in median waiting times across remoteness areas occurred for presentations assigned a triage category of Non-urgent – median waiting times varied from 17 minutes for people living in Outer regional areas to 27 minutes for people living in Major cities.
- People living in Major cities had the longest median waiting times for Semi-urgent (30 minutes) and Non-urgent (27 minutes) triage categories. People living in Inner Regional had the longest median waiting times for Urgent (23 minutes) and Emergency categories (8 minutes).
These data are sourced from the AIHW National Non-admitted Patient Emergency Department Care Database.
- For more data on emergency department care by state/territory see the data tables on the Emergency department care topic page. Data for previous reporting periods is available via the Data downloads page.
- To explore emergency department care data by hospital or LHN see My local area.
- Further information about this data collection, appendixes and information on the data quality is available to download in the Other resources section.
- Definitions of the terms used in this section are available in the Glossary.