Care provided in emergency departments

Patients present to the emergency department (ED) for various reasons. This section presents information on care provided in EDs by urgency of care, mode of arrival, reason for care (principal diagnosis) and provides information on how the care was completed.

Explore the data

Explore ED presentations by ICD-10-AM principal diagnosis chapter, age group and sex for 2024–25 and recent years in the data visualisation below.

Urgency of care

When a patient presents to an ED, an experienced registered nurse or medical practitioner allocates them a triage category. The triage category indicates the time within which their clinical care should commence and hence the urgency of the patient’s need for medical and nursing care.

Nationally. in 2024–25, there were 9.1 million ED presentations, and of these:

• 1.0% were assigned a triage category of Resuscitation
• 18% were assigned as Emergency
• 42% were assigned as Urgent
• 34% were assigned as Semi-urgent
• 6.1% were assigned as Non-urgent.

Principal diagnosis

In a considerable proportion of presentations, no specific condition is diagnosed. This may reflect a focus in EDs on managing the symptoms and immediate care needs of patients, which often does not require (or allow time for) detailed examination and assessment of the underlying causes and conditions. For example, in 2024–25, where a principal diagnosis was provided, the most common principal diagnosis group was the Symptoms, signs and abnormal clinical and laboratory findings, not elsewhere classified ICD-10-AM group, which accounted for 27% of presentations (2.5 million presentations).

The next most common group was Injury, poisoning and certain other consequences of external causes, which accounted for 22% of presentations (2.0 million presentations). Almost half (47%) of these presentations were assigned a triage category of semi-urgent.

Arrival mode

The mode of arrival relates to how a patient arrives at the ED, whether by ambulance or helicopter rescue service or police/correctional vehicle.

In 2024–25, around three-quarters (73%) of people presenting to EDs arrived via another form of transport (categorised as Other – includes private transport, public transport taxi or walking). Patients with a triage category of Resuscitation were most likely to have an arrival mode of Ambulance, air ambulance or helicopter rescue service (83%). This arrival mode becomes less likely as the urgency of care decreases.

How care was completed

The episode end status describes the status of the patient at the conclusion of their episode in the emergency department, including whether the patient was subsequently admitted to the hospital.

Most ED presentations end with the patient leaving the hospital (Departed without being admitted or referred). However, this varies considerably across jurisdictions and can reflect differing admission practices. For example, one hospital might admit a patient to a short stay unit, another may manage their care entirely within the ED.

In 2024–25:

• 30% of all presentations to EDs were Admitted to this hospital. This varied across states and territories – from 24% in Western Australia to 43% in the Australian Capital Territory
• the proportion of people presenting to EDs who were Admitted to this hospital tends to increase with age. Of people aged 5–14 who presented to an ED, 14% were admitted, rising to 67% of people aged 95 and over
• 59% of all presentations reported an episode end status of Departed without being admitted or referred. This proportion was higher for less urgent triage categories – for example, 77% of Non-urgent patients Departed without being admitted or referred, compared with 17% of Resuscitation patients
• 4.1% of patients (377,000) left the emergency department ‘at their own risk’, with 46% of these patients being categorised as Urgent, 12% as Emergency, and <1% as Resuscitation.