A follow-up performance audit of Queensland Health’s management of the length of time patients stay in emergency departments has found it to be managing the performance ‘effectively’.
The Audit was in in response to an Audit Report from October 2014, Emergency department performance reporting (Report 3: 2014–15).
In his Report, Measuring emergency department patient wait time (Report 2: 2021-2022) , Auditor-General, Brendan Worrall said Queensland Health, which included the Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) and hospital and health services, was working to improve emergency department (ED) patient wait time.
“However, more people are arriving at EDs for treatment, and these presentations are becoming more complex,” Mr Worrall said.
He said this had put pressure on Queensland Health’s ability to improve emergency length of stay (ELOS) and patient off stretcher time (POST) performance.
“While each year EDs continue to treat more patients within required time frames, their performance against these two measures has gradually declined and they are consistently unable to meet their targets,” Mr Worrall said.
“There have been a range of strategies implemented to help improve patient flows, however, the overall performance of the system has not improved,” he said.
“Furthermore, Queensland Health has identified that strategies are not consistently evaluated and understood to ensure the effective rollout across the State.”
The Auditor-General said despite the QAS becoming part of Queensland Health in 2013, there remained a lack of system integration with integrated electronic medical record modules in hospitals.
“This limits Queensland Health from being more successful in improving performance and identifying root cause issues in the short term,” he said.
Mr Worrall said the 2014 Report concluded that “controls over ED data have been, and remain, weak or absent”.
“In 2021, controls still must be improved to ensure QAS and ED data is complete, accurate and validated in a timely manner,” he said.
“Queensland Health does not currently have an adequate and efficient approach for detecting and correcting data errors relating to a patient’s length of stay and time taken to be moved off an ambulance stretcher.”
The Audit made five recommendations to help Queensland Health improve its processes for data reliability, ED performance measures, the appropriate use of ED short-term treatment areas and the interface between ED and QAS systems.
The Auditor General’s 71-page Report can be accessed at this PS News link.