Record patient numbers at Gold Coast hospitals

The Gold Coast and Robina Hospitals are treating more patients than any other Queensland hospitals, seeing 35,237 patients during the June quarter, according to the latest Quarterly Public Hospitals Performance Report released today.

The Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital is the second highest performer seeing 32,402 patients in the same period.

Elective surgery procedures received by people on the Gold Coast reached 2884, the third highest in the state, despite the high number of inpatients and/or emergencies in the same period.

“The Gold Coast Hospital and Robina Hospital treat more people in emergency departments than any other hospital in the state totalling 23,693 people this quarter compared with the next highest performer, Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital at 17,627,” Health Minister Stephen Robertson said

“The challenge for the hospitals on the Gold Coast is to manage the emergency and trauma arriving daily while still providing elective surgery services to the community.

“The new Gold Coast Surgical Centre is a step in the right direction and is already providing extra elective surgery procedures for local residents.

“We promised to begin operations of the Gold Coast Surgical Centre in July and I am delighted to confirm that we have delivered on this promise.

“The first patient to be treated through this centre received surgery last month.

“This is an important achievement because quite a remarkable amount of work has been done in a very short space of time to get the centre up and running.

“We’re continuing to increase capacity at the centre and by November we expect two surgery theatres to be operating, with all three theatres operational by January.

“The Robina Hospital expansion is scheduled for completion in 2010 and the Gold Coast University Hospital will open its doors in December 2012 – but we’re not resting on our laurels.

“We’re building capacity to treat patients now, and initiatives like the Gold Coast Surgical Centre allow us to do that,” Mr Robertson said.

Also in the report, a Patient Satisfaction Survey of 15,000 medical patients across the state revealed that 89% of Gold Coast Hospital patients were very satisfied or fairly satisfied with the care they received during their stay in at the hospital.

“This is a credit to our hospital staff who continue to provide the best possible service and care to the people in the Gold Coast community despite the continuing increased demand for health services,” Mr Robertson said.

The Quarterly Public Hospitals Performance Report (June 08 quarter) is available in the ‘What's New’ section of the Queensland Health website at www.health.qld.gov.au

Definitions:

Outpatient services provided = the number of outpatient and other non-admitted services minus services such as emergency, pharmacy, pathology, diagnostic imaging, community health services, district nursing services and other outreach services.

People treated as inpatients or emergencies = the number of admitted patient episodes plus the number of emergency services not resulting in admission. For example, some people will attend the Emergency Department and then be admitted to hospital. These people will only be counted once as inpatients and not counted as emergency patients for this particular figure.

People admitted to hospital = the number of admitted patient episodes of care. For example, one person might be admitted to hospital on two separate occasions, they would then be counted as two episodes of care.

People treated in emergency departments = the number of accident and emergency services provided. For example, a patient attends emergency three times, then it is counted as three separate attendances to the emergency department.

People received elective surgery = the number of people admitted for elective surgery from the elective surgery waiting list in either Category 1, 2 or 3.

People waiting for elective surgery = the number of patients waiting for elective surgery from Category 1, 2 or 3 with a status of ‘waiting’ or ‘booked’.

Category Definitions (Elective Surgery)

Category 1 – Urgent Admission within 30 days desirable, for a condition that has the potential to deteriorate quickly to the point that it may become an emergency.

Category 2 – Semi-urgent Admission within 90 days desirable, for a condition causing some pain, dysfunction or disability, but which is not likely to deteriorate quickly or become an emergency.

Category 3 – Non-urgent Admission at some time in the future acceptable, for a condition causing minimal or no pain, dysfunction or disability, which is unlikely to deteriorate quickly and which does not have the potential to become an emergency.

Long-wait is the term applied to any waiting time that exceeds the recommendation for that category.

Media: Minister’s Office 3234 1185