NSW Health has thanked the community for its understanding and patience during one of the most challenging quarters on record, the peak of the Omicron outbreak from January to March.
Secretary of NSW Health, Susan Pearce said the latest Bureau of Health Information’s (BHI) Healthcare Quarterly report highlighted some of the impacts of the unprecedented period for the public health service.
“High numbers of COVID-19 cases State-wide presented serious challenges due to complex presentations and admissions to hospitals and many staff being unavailable due to being exposed to or contracting the virus in the community or at work,” Ms Pearce said.
“We have never seen a period like it before, from the huge volume of COVID-19 cases to the thousands of furloughed staff, and I want to thank the community for their understanding and patience as we faced the many challenges that came our way,” she said.
“I want to thank all our staff throughout the State for their incredible efforts to keep the community safe and deliver high quality care during one of the most challenging periods of the pandemic.”
Ms Pearce said that during the first quarter of 2022, there were 734,704 attendances at NSW emergency departments (EDs), with the majority of ED patients (70.5 per cent) starting treatment on time and almost eight in 10 patients (78.6 per cent) transferred from ambulance to ED staff within the 30-minute benchmark.
She acknowledged that the Omicron outbreak had an impact on the timeliness of care provided in the State’s hospitals and by NSW Ambulance during the quarter.
Ms Pearce said despite a necessary pause in non-urgent elective surgeries earlier in the year, 38,493 elective surgeries were performed across the State and almost all urgent elective surgeries (99.1 per cent) were performed on time.
“Public hospitals also performed more than 20,000 emergency surgeries during the quarter, which are not included in the BHI report, but are often the most critical surgical procedures.”
The 36-page BHI Healthcare Quarterly report can be accessed at this PS News link.
