Fewer people who saw a GP for urgent care waited less than four hours. Nationally, the number of those who were seen in less than four hours dropped from 63.8 per cent in 2012-2013, to 60.9 per cent in 2018-2019 and then to 59.4 per cent in 2019-2020.
At the same time, the number of people waiting 24 hours or more increased from 24 per cent in 2012-2013, to 27.7 in 2018-2019 and 29.8 per cent in 2019-2020.
But the number of avoidable emergency department presentations, which could have potentially been GP presentations instead, has dropped from just over 2.9 million nationally in 2018-2019 to 2.84 million last year.
Patients requiring urgent resuscitation in emergency departments were all seen within the clinically appropriate timeframe. For other triage categories – ranging from emergency to non-urgent – roughly 74 per cent of patients were seen within appropriate times.
However, wait times were still lengthy. For emergency department patients who were admitted to hospital, less than half (46 per cent) waited less than four hours to be admitted.
The number of “adverse events” in hospitals – including healthcare-associated infections, as well as injuries, illness or falls that occurred in hospital – has remained steady year-on-year, at 0.7 per 100,000 patients.
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The Productivity Commission report said it was “desirable” to see a high or increasing level of management of chronic disease.
For asthma that was measured through having a written asthma management plan. However, less than a third of people (32.3 per cent) with asthma had a written asthma management plan in 2017-2018, the year with the latest available data. That is up from 28.4 per cent in 2014-2015.
In diabetes, having blood sugar level less than or equal to 7 per cent was considered “appropriate management”. The data, from 2011-2012, showed just over half (50.5 per cent) of people with diagnosed diabetes met that criteria.
