Between 2013–14 and 2017–18, the number of patients presenting to public hospital emergency departments increased by 2.7% on average each year.
In 2017–18:
- there were 8.0 million emergency department presentations—over 22,000 presentations each day
- for patients aged 0 to 14, more boys than girls presented to emergency departments (56% and 44%, respectively)
- patients aged 4 and under (11%) and patients aged 65 years and over (22%) were over-represented in emergency department presentations, compared with the overall population
- 25% of patients arrived by ambulance, air ambulance or helicopter rescue service.
How urgently did patients require care or treatment?
On arrival at the emergency department, patients are assigned a triage category of either:
- Resuscitation (should be seen immediately)
- Emergency (within 10 minutes)
- Urgent (within 30 minutes)
- Semi-urgent (within 60 minutes)
- Non-urgent (within 2 hours).
In 2017–18, 51% of patients were assigned to the 3 most urgent triage categories, ranging from 40% for patients aged 5 to 14 to 67% for patients aged 95 and over.
Performance indicator: Waiting times for emergency hospital department care—proportion seen on time
Overall, the proportion of emergency patients that were seen on time decreased from 75% in 2013–14 to
72% in 2017–18.
Almost 100% of Resuscitation patients were seen immediately (within 2 minutes), 76% of Emergency patients were seen within 10 minutes, and 92% of Non-urgent patients were seen within 2 hours.
In 2017–18, the overall proportion seen on time ranged from 49% in the Australian Capital Territory to 80% in New South Wales.