The Bureau of Health Information (BHI) has today released its latest Healthcare Quarterly report, showing activity and performance for public health services in NSW during October to December 2024.

NSW public hospital and ambulance services continued to experience significant demand during the quarter.

Ambulance activity reached 391,370 responses – up 3.1% on the same time a year earlier and the highest since BHI began reporting in 2010.

Patients waited longer for an ambulance to arrive with the median response time for the highest priority 1A (P1A) cases 8.4 minutes (up from 8.2 minutes in 2023), and 14.1 minutes for emergency priority 1 (P1) cases (up from 13.2 minutes).

Demand for emergency departments (EDs) remained very high, with 802,697 attendances to NSW public hospital EDs in October to December 2024. A record 196,617 of those patients arrived by ambulance.

Compared with the same quarter a year earlier, EDs continued to see more patients with the most urgent clinical conditions, while the number of patients in the least urgent triage category (5) dropped by 4.1%.

While just 65.3% of patients started their treatment on time, this was an improvement from the record low (61.4%) in the preceding quarter.

In October to December 2024, 67,902 patients left the ED without, or before completing, treatment – up 5.9% (3,810) compared with the same quarter a year earlier and up 32% since 2019, outpacing growth in overall ED attendances.

BHI Chief Executive Dr Diane Watson said BHI had conducted special analysis to understand more about this group of patients.

“The latest analysis shows that patients with less urgent conditions and patients aged 15–44 years were more likely to leave without, or before completing, treatment. Patients who left were most likely to do so on Mondays – the busiest day of the week – and across the week between 8pm and 4am,” Dr Watson said.

Regardless of the time of day they arrived in the ED, the overall time spent in the ED for patients who left without, or before completing, treatment was between 2 and 2 and a half hours – although one in 10 patients waited more than six hours in the ED before eventually leaving without completing treatment.

“Previous BHI analyses show that around one in five patients who leave without, or before completing, treatment tend to return to the same or a different ED within three days, contributing to further demand on NSW public hospitals,” Dr Watson said.

Healthcare Quarterly also shows that in October to December 2024, there were 54,966 elective surgeries performed. At the end of December, there were 100,235 patients on the elective surgery waiting list – up 13.1% from the same quarter a year earlier and close to the record peak reached during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Of those patients on the list waiting for surgery, 6,842 had waited longer than clinically recommended – up 220.8% (from 2,133) from the same time in 2023.

Detailed results for Healthcare Quarterly are available at bhi.nsw.gov.au