National trends
Urgency of care
When a patient presents to the ED, an experienced registered nurse or medical practitioner allocates them a triage category. This indicates the urgency of the patient’s need for medical and nursing care.
In 2018–19 there were 8.3 million ED presentations, and of these:
- 0.8% were assigned a triage category of Resuscitation
- 13.6% were assigned to Emergency
- 38.0% were assigned to Urgent
- 39.2% were assigned to Semi-urgent
- 8.3% were assigned to Non-urgent
Between 2014–15 and 2018–19 the proportion of presentations assigned a triage category of Urgent have increased, and the proportions assigned the triage categories of Semi-urgent or Non-urgent have decreased.
Arrival mode
The mode of arrival is whether a patient arrives by ambulance, or another form of transport. This section presents information on how people arrived to the ED.
In 2018–19, the majority of presentations to EDs (73%) had an arrival mode of Other which indicates that the patient either walked into the ED, or came by private transport, public transport, community transport, or taxi.
Principal diagnosis
In 2018–19:
- a principal diagnoses of Injury, poisoning and certain other consequences of external causes accounted for 1 in 4 presentations (2 million). These include fractures, burns, toxic effects of medicinal and non-medicinal substances drug overdoses (accidental or otherwise, legal or prescription)
- the 20 most common 3-character ICD-10-AM principal diagnoses accounted for about 33% of principal diagnoses reported
- the most common 3-character ICD-10-AM principal diagnoses were Abdominal and pelvic pain (4.6%), followed by Pain in throat and chest (4.1%).
How care was completed
The episode end status describes the status of the patient at the conclusion of the non-admitted patient episode in the emergency department, including whether the patient was subsequently admitted to the ED.
In the data visualisation, you can explore ED visits by type of presentation.
In 2018–19:
- 31% of all presentations were Admitted to this hospital at the conclusion of treatment in the ED and this proportion varied slightly across states and territories (26–37%)
- more than 65% of patients aged 85 and over were Admitted to this hospital compared with fewer than 18% of patients aged 0–24
- 60% of all presentations reported an episode end status of Departed without being admitted or referred, and this proportion was higher for less urgent triage categories. For example, 11% of Resuscitation patients Departed without being admitted or referred, compared with 82% of Non-urgent patients.