Tara Murray
Semi-urgent care presentations at Sunshine Hospital dropped to the lowest number in more than 10 years in the last financial year, according to new data.
Data released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) last week revealed presentations to public hospital emergency departments rebounded in 2020–21, following a decline in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Western Health’s Sunshine Hospital bucked that trend, seeing less patients in most categories.
The number of patients presenting to Sunshine Hospital for emergency cases was 9624, down from 9727 in the previous financial year.
The number of resuscitations was down slightly from 786 to 784.
The number of semi-urgent care cases presenting at Sunshine emergency department continues to fall.
There were 24,216 people present to the ED, down by nearly 2000 people from the previous 12 months.
Urgent care cases also continued to fall, down to 28,395 from 30,304 from the previous 12 months.
AIHW spokesperson Dr Adrian Webster said while emergency department presentations rebounded in 2020–21, the increase was in part due to fever clinics established to assess people who may be infected with COVID-19.
“Following steady annual average growth of 3.2 per cent between 2014–15 and 2018–19, and a dip of 1.4 per cent in 2019–20, presentations to public hospital emergency departments increased by 6.9 per cent in 2020–21,” he said.
“There were 8.8 million presentations to Australian public hospital emergency departments in 2020–21, compared to 8.2 million presentations in 2019–20.”
