QEII Hospital continues to meet high demand for services

QEII Jubilee Hospital has treated more patients in the June 2008 quarter than it did in the same period in 2007, according to the latest Quarterly Public Hospitals Performance Report released today.

Health Minister Stephen Robertson said the report revealed QEII Hospital treated 10,904 people as inpatients or emergencies during the June 2008 quarter, an increase of 7.6% on the same period last year.

“The Emergency Department continues to treat more patients with 8,579 people attending in the June quarter,” he said.

“This averages 94 people a day and represents an increase of 4.6% from the 8,202 people seen during same quarter in 2007.

“In the June 2008 quarter, 4,425 patients were admitted to QEII Hospital, an increase of 8% on the 4,097 patients admitted during the same period last year,” Mr Robertson said.

QEII Hospital provided 16,065 outpatient occasions of service in the June quarter. This was an increase of 8.8% from the 14,706 services provided in the same period last year.

“In addition, 1,180 people received their elective surgery, a 10% increase from the March 2008 quarter,” Mr Robertson said.

The report showed that as at 1 July, 22 Category 1 patients had waited longer than 30 days for their surgery and 75 Category 2 patients had waited longer than recommended for their surgery.

On the Category 3 wait list, 54 patients waited longer than the recommended 365 days for their surgery, an improvement compared to the 62 patients who were waiting at 1 April 2008.

Also in the report, the Patient Satisfaction Survey of 15,000 medical patients across the state revealed that 91% of QEII 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 QEII 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