- Home
- Hospitals
- Waiting Times
-
Summaries and comparisons
Summaries and comparisons
It may be useful to compare waiting times for procedures across NSW. It may also be useful to compare waiting times at different hospitals for the same procedure. Click on the above links to find summary data on non-urgent, semi-urgent and urgent booked procedures or comparisons of waiting times by hospital.
Waiting times by procedure
See waiting times by procedure across NSW for the following clinical priorities:
Waiting times by hospital
Health services across Australia are dealing with an ever increasing demand on services from an ageing population, the availability of new technologies, and new procedures that were not widely available until recently. People are living longer and undergoing more medical procedures. Procedures are now being performed which were never thought imaginable. And the demand for these procedures is growing every year. For example, the number of implanted cardiac defibrillators in NSW increased by 413% from 1994/95 to 1998/99 at an average cost of $27,000. These procedures are now becoming more common and are saving lives and improving the quality of life, particularly for our older population. This means more people will join the list and the lists will expand. What is important is how long each person waits. The list in Current Waiting Times and Lists by Specialties for NSW Hospitals lists the procedures and waiting times for each NSW hospital for the month of.
Definition
Average waiting time: is the average of the actual waiting times (the time between the date of listing and the date of admission) for those patients admitted during the month. For example, if half the patients admitted during the month had been waiting for one month and half had been waiting for three months, the average waiting time for the month would be two months. List transfers: are administrative changes relating to where waiting list details are kept. In some cases, doctors maintain in their rooms a list of patients awaiting admission to hospital, only notifying the hospital of the patient's details at or close to the time of the patient's admission. In these cases, patients are not put on a hospital's waiting list until very shortly before their admission. NSW Department of Health policy is that hospitals should endeavour to acquire details of these patients at the time the doctor makes the decision to admit them. When doctors agree to supply these lists to the hospital rather than keeping them in their rooms, the patients are added to the hospital's waiting list. This is known as a list transfer. It is not a change in demand for hospital services. Booked patients (formerly referred to as elective patients) are those who require non-emergency admission to hospital (ie. admission is required but need not occur within 24 hours) and who have been placed (booked) on the hospital's booking (or waiting) list.
|
