The Bureau of Health Information (BHI) recently released its Healthcare Quarterly report showing how public hospitals and ambulance services in NSW performed in July to September 2017.

Compared to the same period last year, people starting treatment on time dropped by 8.1 percentage points.

Patients leaving the emergency department within four hours of arrival also dropped, in this case by 3.7 percentage points.

The number of people to present to the the hopsital was 5,124. This was an increase of 569 people in comparison with the same period last year.

Of those patients, 4,997 were ED presentations and  77.6 per cent of those spent four or less hours in the ED.

The median time for leaving the ED was two hours and 26 minutes, up by seven minutes from the same period last year.

Bowral and District Hospital general manager Valerie Jovanovic said the hospital’s ED experienced the biggest increase in presentations on record during the worst influenza season ever for Australia.

“Despite this, South Western Sydney Local Health District emergency department staff did an incredible job in providing safe and high-quality care.”

Ms Jovanovic said there was a 12.5 per cent in crease in ED presentations.

This was an extra 569 patients compared to the same period last year and above the state average increase of nine per cent.

“Despite this, the majority of patients were seen within the recommended four-hour timeframe,” she said.

“The ED had a higher number of patients who needed emergency or urgent care (category 1 and 2) and 59.2 per cent of patients were semi-urgent and non-urgent patients presenting to the ED, which contributed to the demand on our services.”

There were 161 people throughout the quarter- 3.1 percent- that left without or before completing treatment, while 16.6 per cent were treated before being admitted.

The BHI report said 74.8 per cent (3,832) of patients who went to the ED were treated and discharged.

Ms Jovanovic said Bowral Hospital managed to maintain strong elective surgery results even though there was extra pressure on EDs.

“100 per cent of urgent and semi-urgent surgeries performed on time along with 99.5 per cent of non-urgent surgeries.”

Across NSW more than 720,000 patients presented to a NSW public hospital emergency department – the highest number ever recorded by BHI and 9.4 per cent higher than the same quarter last year.

Ms Jovanovic said the hospital has in place several strategies to manage and further improve the winter surge period, and was implementing the Emergency Treatment Performance Transformation Program.

This program focuses on patients who can be seen within the ED and discharged safely home within four hours.

Visit bhi.nsw.gov.au to view the report and data, including local hospital information.