Footscray’s Western and Frankston hospitals are among Australia’s worst-performing hospitals when it comes to federal targets to treat emergency patients within four hours.
A report released on Thursday by the National Health Performance Authority shows the pair were in the lowest 10 per cent of major metropolitan hospitals across Australia on the measure last year.
At the Western Hospital, just 49 per cent of patients in the emergency department were discharged or admitted to hospital within four hours, while Frankston Hospital treated 50 per cent of patients on time.
The Alfred hospital was the only major Melbourne hospital that met a target for Victorian hospitals to treat 75 per cent of emergency patients within four hours last year.
It treated 77 per cent of patients within that time.
Other major Melbourne hospitals that struggled to meet the four-hour emergency target were the Box Hill (54 per cent), the Royal Melbourne (55 per cent) and the Northern (56 per cent) hospitals.
In the budget, the federal government abandoned reward payments for hospitals that meet the targets, which could cost Victoria about $25 million over the next two financial years.
The targets were agreed by the Council of Australian Governments in 2011, with a requirement that 90 per cent of Australian patients would be admitted to a bed or discharged within four hours by 2015. Interim deadlines varied between states so they could improve on past performances. In Victoria the target will rise from 77 per cent last year to 81 per cent this year.
Overall, about 67 per cent of emergency patients were treated in four hours in Victoria last year.
The Victorian chair of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine, Simon Judkins, said the four-hour target had created a greater focus on getting patients through emergency departments, reducing the problem of ambulances queuing to offload patients.
But he said efficiencies in hospitals only went so far and more beds were required for patients needing admission to hospital.
Dr Judkins said emergency doctors were seeking a meeting with federal Health Minister Peter Dutton to determine whether his government remained committed to the four-hour target beyond 2015.
Mr Dutton’s office referred questions to the Health Department, which said states were ”responsible and accountable for the performance of public hospitals”.
