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 January to March 2025.
In the first three months of 2025 there were 52,973 elective surgeries performed in NSW public hospitals, up 3.6% compared with the same quarter in 2024.
Despite this increase, at the end of March, there were 100,678 patients on the elective surgery waiting list, up 7.3% (an additional 6,881 patients) and just short of the record peak during the COVID-19 pandemic. Of those patients on the list waiting for surgery at the end of March, 8,587 had waited longer than clinically recommended – a 151.3% increase (an additional 5,170 patients) from the same time a year earlier.
Patients also waited longer to receive their elective surgery. Patients who received semi-urgent surgery in January to March typically waited over a week longer for their surgery than a year earlier (up 9 days to 65 days), and patients who received non-urgent surgery typically waited around a month longer (up 32 days to 322 days).
There were 785,266 emergency department (ED) attendances in January to March 2025, down 3.1% from the same time a year earlier. EDs continued to see fewer patients with the least urgent clinical conditions, with the number of patients in triage categories 4 and 5 falling by 6.2% and 11.7%, respectively.
In January to March 2025, the median time from arrival to leaving the ED for all patients was 3 hours and 40 minutes. For patients who were treated and subsequently discharged from the ED, the median time spent in the ED was 3 hours and 5 minutes; and for patients who were treated and admitted to hospital or transferred to another hospital, the median was 8 hours and 11 minutes. Patients who were treated and admitted to an ED Short Stay Unit spent a median 4 hours and 10 minutes in the ED. NSW Health has introduced new Hospital Access Targets (HATs) for local health districts relating to the time from arrival to leaving the ED, and this is the first issue of Healthcare Quarterly to reflect these measures. More information on the new HATs is available in the Healthcare Quarterly main report.
Reporting of Ambulance activity and performance in this issue is limited due to NSW Ambulance’s mid-quarter transition to a new clinical response grid, which has streamlined the number of response categories.
There were 366,146 ambulance responses during January to March – down 4.5% on the same time a year earlier.
The median response time for ‘life threatening (CAT 1)’ responses was 8.3 minutes – stable when compared with the same quarter a year earlier.
Patients’ experiences of virtual care with NSW public hospital outpatient clinics
BHI also released a second report that provides insights into more than 12,000 patients’ experiences of virtual care services (via telephone or video call) with NSW public hospital outpatient clinics from 2020 to 2024. The report also includes information about outpatients’ experiences of virtual care with GPs.
Virtual care is a major part of healthcare delivery for NSW Health patients, with 18% of outpatient services in 2024 delivered through virtual care – up from 12% in 2019.
Between 2020 and 2024, patients gave consistently high ratings of the virtual care they received from public hospital outpatient clinics, with around nine in 10 saying it was either ‘very good’ or ‘good’.
Over time, patients were increasingly likely to say that virtual care ‘definitely’ helped them (from 67% in 2020 to 72% in 2024), and to say that they would ‘definitely’ use it again if given the choice (37% to 47%).
The report also highlights key insights about whether patients are likely to have positive experiences. For example, patients were much more likely to have high overall satisfaction with virtual care when they said health professionals worked well together and gave understandable explanations; and, they were familiar with the health professionals.
However, patients were significantly less likely to rate their virtual care, overall, as ‘very good’ if they mainly speak a language other than English at home, have a longstanding health condition, or have a university postgraduate degree or higher.
Media Release: Bureau of Health Information
