ANOTHER SOLID PERFORMANCE FOR QUEENSLAND HOSPITALS

Queensland public hospitals treated 479,655 people as inpatients or emergency department patients during the first three months of 2007.

Health Minister Stephen Robertson said new figures released today showed hospitals treated 340,780 people in accident and emergency and admitted 95,384 people for day procedures and 105,987 people for overnight stays in the March quarter.

“These are all increases on the same quarter last year and proves that our public health system is now treating more patients than it ever has before,” Mr Robertson said.

“Our hospitals also delivered 10,248 babies and saw 2.2 million outpatients.”

Mr Robertson said the latest Public Hospitals Performance Report also showed last quarter was another very busy period for public hospital EDs with 221,140 patients treated.

“This is an 8.5% increase on the same period last year (203,854).

“Bundaberg (14.6%), Ipswich (14.3%), QEII (13.5%) and Gold Coast (12.5%) all recorded strong increases in their EDs.

“ED presentations in other large hospitals - Royal Brisbane and Women’s, Princess Alexandra, Logan and Townsville - also rose.”

Mr Robertson said the percentage of patients waiting longer than nationally recommended for elective surgery had fallen in all three categories.

“This is an encouraging result for our surgery waiting lists and it proves the Beattie Government is on the right track towards improving our public health system,” he said.

“Today’s figures show that our measures to reduce ‘long waits’ are working but we’re striving to further improve our elective surgery performance through our $10 billion Health Action Plan.”

Mr Robertson said the percentage of those waiting longer than recommended for urgent elective surgery fell for the third consecutive quarter.

“As at 1 April, the percentage of long wait category 1 patients was 6.8% down from 7.4% the previous quarter,” he said.

“Category 2 or semi urgent long waits fell from 25.8% the previous quarter to 22.7%.

“Category 3 or non-urgent long waits recorded a minimal reduction, 34.1% to 34.0%.”

Mr Robertson said a record month of hospital admissions in March spurred on the positive waiting list result.

“In March, our public hospitals admitted 72,730 patients which is a Queensland Health record and only the second time this figure has surpassed 70,000 in one month,” he said.

“This resulted in more people getting treated and less people waiting too long.

“We have several initiatives underway to further reduce our long waits including an $8.5 million tender for private organisations to treat public patients, conducting more surgical sessions in public hospitals and continuing our strong recruitment drive to fill key vacancies.

“That our public hospitals were able to record high levels of activity across the board and still have the capacity to cut our long waits proves that our health system is improving.”

MEDIA: Joshua Cooney 3234 1185 or 0409 069 056