Waiting times in Canberra's EDs show signs of improvement

A report into the territory's emergency department performance, from ACT Health, showed the median wait time for all patients from July to December was 25 minutes.

Of all the patients in the emergency department, more than 55 per cent left within four hours of presenting at the department.

The results have been heralded as an improvement by ACT health officials and the government.

Data on emergency department performance in the territory has been lagging over the past year following the introduction of the digital health record in late-2022.

The system meant there had to be changes to how authorities collected performance data. Officials had warned the introduction of the digital health record would mean there would be issues with reporting this data.

While the report shows improvements it does come with a caveat to say that previous emergency department results reported by ACT Health are not directly comparable with the latest report.

"A comparison of data from this report against those from quarterly performance reports released pre-DHR is not valid as data would have been drawn from different source systems," the report said.

The report also said there are known data reporting issues in the digital health record and work is ongoing to fix this. It said some results may not reflect actual timelines.

"Due to data quality issue related to contemporaneous capture of clinical care in the DHR, data in this report may not reflect the timeline of actual clinical care provided," the report said.

"This is important to note, specifically in relation to the proportion of patients treated in the clinical recommended timeframes, for the resuscitation category."

The report showed December was the best performing month with 68 per cent of patients being seen on time and September was the worst with 56.8 per cent seen on time.

December was also the busiest month with 13,003 patients in the territory's emergency department.

There were 76,505 patients who presented at the territory's emergency departments over the six months. Of those 17,499 patients arrived via an ambulance, 31,343 needed to be admitted into hospital and 40,043 were treated in the emergency department.

Results were similar at Canberra's two public hospitals with 62.1 per cent of patients seen on time at Canberra Hospital and 61.4 per cent of patients seen on time at North Canberra Hospital.

There were 47,504 patients who presented at Canberra Hospital and 29,001 patients at North Canberra Hospital.

Canberra Health Services chief executive Dave Peffer said, in an interview last week, there had been improvements in emergency department wait times since the government took over the former Calvary Public Hospital Bruce.

"We've seen really positive improvements in performance, particularly in the timeliness of care throughout our emergency departments right across the city," he told The Canberra Times.

"Timeliness of care has been something that we've struggled with in the ACT for many years."