Bendigo Hospital emergency visit increase, with longer wait times

Patients spent a median time of three hours and 52 minutes in the emergency department, but there were times when it took more than 12 hours for people to leave.

In 2021-22 a total of 12,652 people presented to the emergency department seeking emergency care, an increase on 11,133 in the previous year.

Since 2018 numbers have jumped by more than 3000 for emergencies, and more than 7330 in the last decade.

Overall, there were 63,893 presentations to the Bendigo Hospital ED in 2021-22 which included emergencies, non-urgent, resuscitation, semi-urgent and urgent cases.

That compares to 60,834 the previous year, an increase of five per cent.

There were 8.79 million presentations to emergency departments in Australia in 2021-22.

According to the institute, hospital admissions data has fluctuated since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Prior to the pandemic, hospitalisations increased by an average of 3.3 per cent per year between 2014-15 and 2018-19," institute spokesperson Dr Adrian Webster said.

"However, the peak of the pandemic has thrown the steady growth trend off balance."

At Bendigo Health, the percentage of people who started treatment within the recommended time for emergencies dropped from 84 per cent in 2012-13 to 62 per cent in 2021-22.

The lowest point in the last decade for hitting targets on treatment times was was 53 per cent in 2020-21.

The recommended time for emergency clinical care was within 10 minutes of arriving at the ER.

Sixty-four per cent of Bendigo Health patients considered urgent cases received care within the recommended 30 minutes in 2021-22, down from 70 per cent in 2012-13.

Ninety per cent of patients considered non-urgent received care within the recommended two hours in 2021-22, down from 92 per cent in 2012-13.

People with COVID-19 jumped from 4700 in 2020-21,the first year of the pandemic, to 263,400 the following year it rolled on.

"While there has been a substantial increase in the number of hospitalisations involving a COVID-19 diagnosis, this does not necessarily reflect the severity of the illness; it could be related to the widespread nature of COVID-19," Dr Webster said.

"In many cases patients are admitted with COVID-19, not necessarily because of COVID-19.

Of the 263,400 hospitalisations involving a COVID-19 diagnosis, three per cent involved a stay in the intensive care unit, 1.3 per cent required ventilation and two per cent of patients died in hospital.

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