Emigrating to Australia: hospital waiting times
01 December 2016 by News DeskEmigrating to Australia where admissions to hospital for elective surgery are increasing every year.
Emigrating to Australia: a new report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare shows that after adjusting for the number of hospitals included, admissions from public hospital elective surgery waiting lists increased by about 1.7% on average each year between 2011–12 and 2015–16.
Amid rising admissions, waiting times remained relatively stable over the same period.
Jenny Hargreaves spokesperson of the AIHW says: “In 2015–16, the average waiting time (the time within which 50% of all patients were admitted) was 37 days.
“This was not much different from the median of 35 days recorded for 2014–15 and the median of 36 days recorded each year from 2011–12 to 2013–14.”
Emigrating to Australia: hospital waiting times
The proportion of patients who waited longer than 365 days to be admitted for their procedure decreased from 2.7% to 2.0% between 2011–12 and 2015–16.
In 2015–16, the procedure with the shortest median waiting time (13 days) was Coronary artery bypass graft, and Septoplasty (to fix a deviated septum) had the longest median waiting time (209 days).
The report shows that the median waiting time for Indigenous Australians (43 days) was higher than for other Australians (37) and a higher proportion of Indigenous Australians waited more than a year for elective surgery than other Australians (2.3% and 2.0%, respectively).
Go to the MyHospitals website (www.myhospitals.gov.au) for information on waiting times by urgency of surgery, the specialty of the surgeons performing the elective surgery and for various surgical procedures.
Information is also available covering waiting times at 290 hospital emergency departments across Australia.
The website has an interactive web tool showing how public hospitals compare against other similar hospitals for a range of measures.
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