Sunbury Day Hospital has cut its waiting list and improved the turnover of patients needing day procedures, as Victorian hospitals continue to experience unprecedented demand.
Health performance data from the state government shows the hospital is performing well in most key areas, including reducing its waiting list for elective surgery from 133 to 84 in the year to last December.
All elective surgery patients were treated at Sunbury within the benchmark times set during this period – topping the statewide average of 90 per cent.
Half of the hospital’s category one elective surgery patients were treated within five days, which is well below the 30-day benchmark.
Elective surgery is for patients who can wait longer than 24 hours for a procedure, while a category one case requires those procedures to take place within 30 days.
The Ambulance Victoria data also confirmed that the average time for an ambulance to reach a code one accident or emergency in Hume improved to 13.39 minutes in the December quarter, from 14.25 minutes a year earlier.
Over the same period, the proportion of ambulances that arrived within the benchmark 15 minutes for the most time-critical patients – including cardiac arrest, heart attack, major trauma and stroke patients – improved from 67.6 per cent to 73.4 per cent.
Sunbury MP Josh Bull said the government’s investment in health meant more patients in Sunbury, and Hume overall, are getting the care, treatment and surgery they need sooner.
Statewide figures show that of the 443,084 people who presented at emergency departments across Victoria over summer, more than a third needed hospital admission, the highest number ever.
