The Bureau of Health Information has announced that NSW public hospitals performed a record number of elective surgeries in the final quarter of 2020, performing more than 62,000 procedures.
Deputy Secretary of NSW Health, Nigel Lyons said this was the highest number of elective surgical procedures ever performed during an October to December quarter.
“Our surgical activity increased by almost eight per cent compared with the same period in 2019 and admitting this many patients for their elective surgery during the quarter was a remarkable effort at a busy time of year,” Dr Lyons said.
“While we still have lots of work to do, we have continued to reduce the number of people on the wait list while maintaining our important COVID-19 measures and preparedness across our public hospitals,” he said.
“Critically, 99.8 per cent of those people requiring urgent elective surgery in NSW had it performed on time.”
Dr Lyons said emergency departments across the State saw more than 792,000 attendances during the October to December quarter.
“This was the highest number of attendances ever recorded in NSW during a quarter, though once again non-urgent presentations (triage five) were up notably due in part to COVID-19 testing within emergency departments or co-located testing clinics,” he said.
“Despite the record number of emergency department attendances, timeliness of care improved, with treatment starting on time for 74 per cent of patients,” Dr Lyons said.
He said NSW Ambulance was also very busy, with almost 320,000 responses, which was also the highest number of responses for an October to December quarter.
