Emergency department presentations
How do people get to and leave Emergency Departments?
How a person arrives at and departs from an emergency department (ED) can provide information about the severity of their presentation. Presentations to ED are categorised into three arrival modes:
- Ambulance, air ambulance or helicopter rescue service
- Police/correctional services vehicle
- Other (includes people who either walked into ED, or came by private transport, public transport, or taxi)
In 2023–24, Other was the most common form of arrival to ED with an injury (79.4% or 1,447,724 cases), followed by Ambulance, air ambulance or helicopter rescue service at 367,253 cases (20.1%) (Figure 6).
In 2023–24, 78.6% of ED presentations for injuries departed without being admitted or referred to another hospital. A moderate proportion of presentations for injuries did require further hospital treatment, with 17.3% being admitted to the same hospital they presented to.
Figure 6: Number of ED presentations for injury by arrival mode and episode end status, Australia, 2023–24
Notes:
1. Cells contain numbers of injury related ED presentations, by arrival mode and episode end status.
* 'Ambulance' includes air ambulance and helicopter services
** In these cases, the person was registered, advised of another health care service, and left without being attended to.
Source: AIHW National Non-admitted Patient Emergency Department Care Database.
When do injuries present to Emergency Departments?
In 2023–24 (Figure 7):
- injury presentations to ED peaked in March at 162,977 cases
- presentations at night time (18:00 to 06:00) were more common in summer months, and peaked on January 1st
- weekends were generally busier than weekdays. Sunday (15.9% of presentations) followed by Saturday (15.7% of presentations) were the busiest days of the week for injury presentations to ED
- patients tended to present to ED for injury during the day (business hours) with a peak in the afternoon around 4pm. Most presentations (81%) occurred between 8am and 8pm daily. On average, 4am was the quietest time of day.
Figure 7: Presentation by date, month, day of the week and hour of the day for ED presentations for injury, Australia, 2023–24
Note: Top left panel: Daytime is 06:00 to 17:59, nighttime is 18:00 to 05:59.
Source: AIHW National Non-admitted Patient Emergency Department Care Database.
Urgency of care
Every presentation to an ED is assigned one of 5 triage categories based on the urgency with which the person requires assistance (Table 1).
Category | Description | Response |
|---|---|---|
1- Resuscitation | Immediately life threatening | Immediate simultaneous assessment and treatment |
2 - Emergency | Imminently life threatening OR Important time critical treatment OR Very severe pain | Assessment and treatment within 10 minutes |
3 - Urgent | Potentially life threatening OR Situational urgency OR Humane practice mandates the relief of severe discomfort or distress within 30 minutes | Assessment and treatment start within 30 minutes |
4 - Semi-urgent | Potentially serious OR Situational urgency OR Significant complexity or severity OR Humane practice mandates the relief of discomfort or distress within one hour | Assessment and treatment start within 60 minutes |
5 - Non-urgent | Less urgent OR clinic-administrative problems | Assessment and treatment start within 120 minutes |
The bulk of injury ED presentations were triaged as semi-urgent (Table 2). In 2023–24, out of the 1.8 million ED presentations for injury, almost half (49.7%) were triaged as semi-urgent and a further 10.1% as non-urgent. This was higher than the proportion of ED presentations for all conditions that were semi-urgent (34.6%) or non-urgent (6.6%), indicating that injuries that presented to ED were generally less severe than presentations overall (AIHW, 2025).
Triage category | Number of injury presentations | Percentage (%) | Corresponding percentage of all ED presentations (%)* |
|---|---|---|---|
Resuscitation | 18,523 | 1.0 | 0.9 |
Emergency | 190,949 | 10.5 | 16.9 |
Urgent | 525,482 | 28.8 | 40.9 |
Semi-urgent | 905,889 | 49.7 | 34.6 |
Non-urgent | 183,582 | 10.1 | 6.6 |
Total | 1,824,454 | 100.0 | 100.0 |
Notes:
* calculated from Supplementary data table 3.3, Emergency department presentations, by triage category and arrival mode, states and territories, 2023–24, Hospitals Emergency department Care 2023–24 data tables.
1. Due to rounding, column percentage totals may not sum to 100%.
Sources: AIHW National Non-admitted Patient Emergency Department Care Database.
Over the last 6 years from 2018–19, age-standardised rates for ED presentations by triage category have fluctuated, with resuscitation and emergency presentations rising slightly and those triaged as urgent, semi-urgent and non-urgent falling over time (Figure 8).
Figure 8: Number and age-standardised rate of ED presentations for injury by triage category, 2023–24
Note: Columns are case counts, line graphs present age-standardised rate per 100,000 population.
Sources: AIHW National Non-admitted Patient Emergency Department Care Database, state and territory population.
Semi-urgent presentations made the bulk of presentations across all age groups, and have decreased over time in all age groups, with working age adults having the lowest rates of semi-urgent injury presentations to ED (Figure 9). However, emergency injury presentation rates have increased over time among people aged under 25 and over 65 years.
Figure 9: Number and crude rate of ED presentations for injury by triage category, sex and age group, Australia, 2023–24
Figure 9 shows that the highest rate of ED presentation is among 0 to 4 year olds, and that most presentations are triaged as Semi-urgent for all age groups.
Figure 10: Number and age-standardised rate of ED presentations for injury by triage category and type of injury, Australia, 2023–24
Figure 10 is a line chart showing the age-standardised rate of injury ED presentations by triage category and injury type. Most injury types are most commonly triaged as Semi-urgent.
Waiting times
In 2023–24:
- 50% of patients who presented to ED for injury were seen within 19 minutes. This waiting time was similar to the average waiting time for patients who presented to ED for all types of conditions (18 minutes) (AIHW 2025)
- 90% of injury patients were seen within 1 hour and 52 minutes, a slightly lower waiting time compared to 1 hour and 57 minutes for those patients who presented to ED for all types of conditions (AIHW 2025)
- In 2023–24, 72.3% of patients treated in ED for injury were ‘seen on time’, compared with 67.0% of patients treated in ED for all types of conditions.
When comparing waiting times for ED presentations for injury with those of all conditions over the last 6 years, 90th percentile waiting times tended to be slightly shorter for presentations for injury, while there was no notable difference in median waiting times for injuries versus overall ED presentations. Over the last 6 years, the overall proportion of injury ED presentations seen on time has fallen, as has the comparable proportion for all conditions. In each year over the same period, those presenting to ED for injuries were slightly more likely to be seen on time than those for all conditions (Figure 11).
Figure 11: Median and 90th percentile waiting time (minutes) of ED presentations and proportion seen on time, Australia, 2018–19 to 2023–24
Notes:
- Median waiting time is equivalent to the time within which 50% of patients were seen; 90th percentile waiting time is equivalent to the time within which 90% of patients were seen.
- Data relate to presentations with a type of visit of Emergency presentation only. Sources: AIHW National Non-admitted Patient Emergency Department Care Database, state and territory population.