Hospitals
Time spent in emergency departments
An emergency department (ED) stay is the period between a patient presenting at an ED, and when that person is recorded as having physically departed the ED (regardless of whether they were admitted, referred, discharged or left at their own risk).
Explore the data
Explore measures related to time spent in the emergency department in 2024–25 and for recent years in the data visualisation below.
The measures presented are:
- proportion of people with a length of stay of 4 hours or less
- 50th percentile (median) time spent in the ED (half of all people waited less than this time)
- 90th percentile time spent in the ED (90% of people waited less than this time).
Proportion of emergency department patients whose length of stay was 4 hours or less in 2024–25 by admission status, peer group and triage category.
Nationally, over the last five years, the length of time associated with ED presentations has been increasing.
In 2024–25:
- 50% of ED presentations were completed within 3 hours and 48 minutes, which is around 47 minutes longer than in 2020–21 (3 hours, 1 minute)
- the time in which 50% of people completed their ED care was twice as long for people who were subsequently admitted to the hospital (6 hours, 13 minutes) than for people who were not admitted (3 hours, 10 minutes)
- 90% of ED presentations were completed within 11 hours and 16 minutes, which is more than 3 hours longer than in 2020–21 (8 hours)
- the time in which 90% of people completed their ED care was more than twice as long for people who were subsequently admitted to the hospital (18 hours, 57 minutes) than for people who were not admitted (7 hours, 44 minutes)
- 53% of people who presented to ED had their care completed within 4 hours, compared to 55% in 2023–24 and 67% in 2020–21
- for people subsequently admitted to the same hospital, just under one-third (30%) of ED presentations were completed within 4 hours
- for people not subsequently admitted, around two-thirds (64%) of ED presentations were completed within 4 hours
- 79% of people presented to ED between the hours of 8 a.m. and 10 p.m.
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.