Bureau of Health Information, January to March 2020: Mudgee Hospital's increase in emergency patients.

From January to March this year the number of emergency presentations increased by 3.1 per cent (or 92 people) from 2940 to 3032, data from the Bureau of Health Information (BHI) Healthcare Quarterly report shows.

Data shows there was a decline in the number of people entering the ED with semi-urgent (down 0.2 per cent) and non-urgent conditions (down 2.5 per cent).

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The number of emergency cases spiked by 12.6 per cent (from 231 people to 260) during the quarter while urgent cases increased by 14.0 per cent (from 644 to 734).

The number of people entering Mudgee Hospital's ED requiring resuscitation dropped by half, from 20 people to 10.

Overall, more than seven in 10 (78.4 per cent) ED patients were treated on time, up 3.7 percentage points.

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"85.7 per cent of patients left within four hours of presentation, and 98.5 per cent of patients had their care transferred from ambulance to emergency department staff within 30 minutes with a median transfer of care time of just seven minutes," Western NSW Local Health District chief executive Scott McLachlan said.

The number of elective surgeries performed at Mudgee Hospital declined by 12.4 per cent during the quarter, while the waiting list increased by 3.1 per cent.

By the end of March there were 133 people still waiting for their day in the operating theatre.

The busiest ED in the region during the January to March period was at Dubbo Hospital where staff helped 8901 patients, which is up 9.2 per cent on the same time last year.

In Orange 7701 people attended the ED (up 0.3 per cent), while there were 6304 presentations at Bathurst's ED (down 5.9 per cent).

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the National Cabinet suspended all non-urgent elective surgery from March 26, with all urgent and some exceptional semi-urgent surgery continuing during this period.

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Mr McLachlan said almost 1500 more patients presented to emergency department across the LHD in this reporting period than for the same time last year, while the number of elected surgeries also increased.

"We are immensely proud of our workforce during this extraordinary period, as I hope the community is too because this year has been tremendously challenging," he said.

"Our doctors and nurses have ensured 100 per cent of urgent surgeries were performed on time across the district, at a time when our EDs were seeing a spike in activity.

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"We saw 48,348 emergency department attendances in the March quarter and a jump in non-urgent activity through the ED at this time, up 9.1 per cent compared to the same period in 2019.

"A lot of this activity was related to bushfires and people presenting with respiratory issues due to smoke and influenza and also people presenting for COVID-19 testing.

"Pleasingly, the number of elective surgeries performed increased slightly from the same quarter in 2019, from 2372 surgeries to 2386, despite all non-urgent elective surgery being suspended nationally from March 26."