Canberra's emergency department wait times plummet to new lows

The latest ACT Health Directorate quarterly report said just 30 per cent of urgent patients were seen on time in Canberra's emergency departments between January and March this year.

Patients in every other emergency department triage category - except resuscitation - also waited longer than the previous quarter.

The percentage of seen on time patients dropped by six per cent for the urgent category and, at 30 per cent, well below the target of 75 per cent.

In the last national comparison, ACT was already the worst performer, especially in the urgent category, but the figures appear to have further deteriorated since then.

The drop in performance did not appear to come due to a jump in patients, with the number of presentations only increasing 0.01 per cent from the previous quarter.

The median time patients waited for treatment also significantly jumped in the quarter.

Urgent patients wait time increased by 24 per cent, at 61 minutes, emergency by 17 per cent, semi urgent by 14 per cent and non urgent by 13 per cent.

Australian Medical Association ACT president Antonio Di Dio said the figures were a clear indication health funding was not keeping up with demand.

"It has nothing to do with the ED staff and everything to do with the demands placed upon them," he said.

"The people who work in the emergency department need more resources to do what they do. Health clearly needs to talk to doctors and nurses on the ground in the ED about where the resourcing is needed.

"They know what times are the busiest, what times patients are the most difficult and demanding."

But he praised health for its new policy of publishing honest quarterly data.

"It is one hundred times better than what we had in the past - statistics lost and the 'dog at my homework' type excuses," Dr Di Dio said.

An ACT Health directorate spokeswoman was asked what was behind the falling performance and if the statistics had ever been so bad.

Those questions were not answered, instead she pointed to the government's investment in nurse led walk in centres.

She said Canberra Health Services CEO Bernadette McDonald has been developing a timely care strategy as one of her first priorities, taking a whole of hospital approach to access and patient flow.

"This work is ongoing with a commitment right across the organisation to continuing to improve services and access to these services for the community," the spokeswoman said.