Emergency department care access

How long people wait to be seen in emergency departments (EDs) is a measure of the accessibility of ED care.

Waiting times measure the time elapsed from presentation in the ED to commencement of clinical care.

Over the last five years, the proportion of patients ‘seen on time’ and the time in which 90% of presentations were completed has increased.

Measurement of time in the emergency department

Progress of the patient through the ED is recorded using 5 different time points:

Presentation time—the time of first recorded contact with an ED staff member, which may be at the start of clerical registration or of the triage process.
Triage time—the time at which the patient was assigned a triage category, which can coincide with presentation time.
Clinical care commencement—the time at which care by a doctor, nurse, mental health practitioner or other health professional commenced, which can also coincide with presentation time.
Episode end time—the time at which the non-admitted patient ED service episode ended.
Physical departure time—the time at which the patient departed the ED, which can coincide with episode end time.

These time points are used to derive the patient’s waiting time, the duration of clinical care, and the length of the emergency department stay.

Emergency department (ED) waiting time is the time elapsed for each patient from presentation in the ED to commencement of clinical care.

A patient is considered to be 'seen on time' when the time between arrival at the ED and the time that their clinical care starts is within the time specified in the definition of the triage category they are assigned:

Resuscitation: Immediate (within seconds)
Emergency: within 10 minutes
Urgent: within 30 minutes
Semi-urgent: within 60 minutes
Non-urgent: within 120 minutes.

Explore the data

The data visualisation below presents the following emergency department waiting time statistics by triage category:

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).

In addition to the national data, the data can also be explored for recent years by:

state and territory
hospital (where data is available)
local Hospital Network (LHN) (where data is available).

Highlights

Over the last five years, the proportion of patients ‘seen on time’ has decreased and the time in which 90% of presentations were seen has increased.

In 2021–22:

The proportion of patients ‘seen on time’ was 67%, down from 71% in 2020–21 and from 72% in 2017–18.
Public acute group A hospitals had the lowest overall proportion of presentations ‘seen on time’ (63%), and Other hospitals had the highest proportion (92%).
50% of patients were seen within 20 minutes, which was a higher waiting time than the previous year (18 minutes) and also higher than the preceding three years.
The time within which 90% of presentations were seen was 1 hour and 57 minutes, an increase from 1 hour and 39 minutes in 2017–18.

More information about the data Expand

Emergency department (ED) waiting time is the time elapsed for each patient from presentation in the ED to commencement of clinical care.

Waiting time statistics are presented as the:

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

In the data visualisation below, you can explore 2021–22 ED waiting times by the patient’s Indigenous status and remoteness area of usual residence.

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.

Highlights

Variation by Indigenous status

Nationally, in 2021–22, the proportion of presentations seen on time for Indigenous Australians was 68%, which was slightly higher than for non-Indigenous Australians (66%).
Indigenous Australians had a slightly lower median waiting time (19 minutes) compared to non-Indigenous Australians (20 minutes).
For the Urgent triage category, Indigenous Australians had a shorter median waiting time (22 minutes) than non-Indigenous Australians (24 minutes). By contrast, for Non-urgent presentations, median waiting times were shorter for non-Indigenous Australians (16 minutes) than for Indigenous Australians (20 minutes).

Variation by remoteness of area of usual residence

Median waiting times for emergency department presentations were longest for people living in Major cities (21 minutes) and shortest for those living in Outer regional, Remote and Very remote areas (17 minutes).
The largest differences in median waiting times across remoteness areas occurred for presentations assigned a triage category of Urgent – for these patients median waiting times varied from 16 minutes for patients living in Remote areas to 26 minutes for patients living in Major cities.
Patients living in Major cities had the longest median waiting times for Emergency (8 minutes), Urgent (26 minutes) and Semi-urgent (32 minutes) triage categories.

More information about the data Expand

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

The data visualisation below presents the following measures related to time spent in the emergency department:

proportion of patients 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).

The data is presented by:

state and territory
admission status
triage category
peer group.

The data can also be explored by:

trends over time
local Hospital Network (LHN) (where data is available)
hospital (where data is available).

Highlights

Over the last five years, the time in which 90% of presentations were completed has been increasing, and the proportion of presentations completed within 4 hours has been decreasing.

In 2021–22:

50% of ED presentations were completed within 3 hours and 20 minutes, which is around 30 minutes longer than in 2017–18 (2 hours, 53 minutes).
The time in which 50% of patients completed their ED care was longer for patients who were subsequently admitted to the hospital (5 hours, 32 minutes) than for patients who were not admitted (2 hours, 46 minutes).
90% of ED presentations were completed within 9 hours and 10 minutes which is just under 2 hours longer than in 2017–18 (7 hours, 14 minutes).
The time in which 90% of patients completed their ED care was longer for patients who were subsequently admitted to the hospital (15 hours, 37 minutes) than for patients who were not admitted (6 hours, 38 minutes).
61% of patients who presented to ED had their care completed within 4 hours compared to 67% in 2020–21 and 71% in 2017–18.
For patients subsequently admitted to the same hospital, one-third (34%) of ED presentations were completed within 4 hours.
For patients not subsequently admitted, 72% of ED presentations were completed within 4 hours.
80% of ED presentations occurred between the hours of 8 a.m. and 10 p.m.