In yet another reminder of the still-deepening health crisis, recently released government figures show more emergency patients at hospitals are waiting for longer for treatment than ever.
An analysis by the Greens of the latest HealthStats report compared to historical data shows last month’s results were the worst on record for emergency department patients triaged in Category 2 – defined as “imminently life threatening, important time-critical treatment, or very severe pain.”
These figures show just 42% of emergency patients in EDs are being seen within the clinically safe timeframe of 10 minutes. That’s the lowest number on record, and way down from the more than 80% seen on time when the Liberals took office.
Worse still, figures for the LGH show just 37% percent of emergency patients are being seen on time, while for the Royal the number is 33%.
This data again shows that despite 10 years of assurances from Liberal politicians that they were giving enough support to the health system, the situation continues to worsen. In fact, when it comes to seeing emergency patients in a timely fashion, we’ve gone from being a top performer to lagging the nation.
There is so much we can do to address the challenges in the health system – including on staffing, infrastructure, and preventative health. But the first step needs to be for Liberal politicians to stop focusing on building a billion dollar stadium, and to make health their top priority instead.
