Logan Hospital continues to meet high demand for services

Logan Hospital continues to be one of the busiest hospitals in Queensland, according to the latest Quarterly Public Hospitals Performance Report released today.

The report reveals that Logan Hospital treated 22,468 people as inpatients or emergencies during the June 2008 quarter, an 8% increase on the same period last year.

“Our Emergency Department continues to treat record numbers of patients, with 15,341 people attending in the June quarter,” Health Minister Stephen Robertson said today.

“This is an increase of 1% from the 15,194 Emergency Department attendances during the same period in 2007.”

The report mirrored a similar trend in relation to increased demand for services for people who needed to be admitted as in-patients.

“In the June 2008 quarter, 9,287 people were admitted to Logan Hospital, up 4.3% on the same period last year,” Mr Robertson said.

“In addition, 1,087 people received their elective surgery, an increase of 15.6% compared to the number of patients admitted from the waiting list during the March 2008 quarter.

“The report shows that no Category 1 patients waited longer than 30 days for their surgery and no Category 2 patients waited longer than the 90 days recommended.

“There were 70 Category 3 patients were waiting longer than the recommended 365 days for their surgery, down from 75 patients in the previous quarter”.

Logan is popular area for families and this was reflected in the increased number of babies born at Logan Hospital, Mr Robertson said.

“In the June 2008 quarter, 892 babies were born making it the busiest maternity service outside of the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital and Mater Health Services. This puts us on target to deliver more than 3,500 babies in the 2008-09 financial year,” he said.

Also in the report, a Patient Satisfaction Survey of 15,000 medical patients across the state revealed that 90% of Logan patients were very satisfied or fairly satisfied with the care they received during their stay 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 Logan community, despite the continuing increased demand for health services.”

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