Over recent days I have argued that Australia’s hospital system is poorly placed to deal with the coronavirus outbreak given it has only 3.8 hospital beds per 1,000 people – only slightly better than Italy and less than one-third Korea and Japan:
This morning it was revealed that NSW’s hospital system was already under acute strain before the coronavirus outbreak, with patients presenting to emergency department surging to a decade high:
“The number of patients presenting to public hospital emergency departments in NSW surged to its highest level in a decade late last year, new figures show.
Statistics released by the Bureau of Health Information show that between October and December 2019 more than 776,000 patients went to a public hospital emergency department in NSW.”
That quarterly figure is the highest since the bureau began collecting data in 2010.
The number of ED patients between January 2019 and December 2019 breached three million for the first time since 2010.
Bureau chief executive Dr Diane Watson said there was a trend of hospital emergency departments coming under increasing pressure.
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Curiously, this article has since been removed from the internet here, here and here.
Nevertheless, the source report is still available and shows the strong increase in NSW emergency presentations since 2014:
ED presentations for all hospitals increased from 626,907 in the July to September 2014 quarter to 764,610 in July to September 2019, up 22.0% (137,703) over five years. July to September 2019 had the highest ED presentations in the five-year period (Figure 1).
For the consistent hospital cohort, ED presentations increased from 626,907 in July to September 2014 to 738,930 in July to September 2019, up 17.9% over five years (Figure 1).
For the larger EDs in peer groups A and B, ED presentations increased from 440,129 in July to September 2014 to 526,633 in July to September 2019, up 19.7% over five years (Figure 1).
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There has also been a strong rise in serious triage emergency presentations:
Across all triage categories, emergency presentations have increased over time. The majority of ED presentations were in triage 4.
Triage 2 (emergency) and triage 3 (urgent) had the largest percentage increases in presentations, up 40.6% (28,746) to 99,633, and 34.0% (68,401) to 269,690, respectively, over five years.
The July to September 2019 quarter had the highest ED presentations in triage 2 and 3 categories in the five-year period (Figure 2).
These are worrying trends given NSW’s health system is about to face its biggest test.
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness.
Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.
