Footscray’s Western Hospital has been found to have the state’s worst-performing metropolitan emergency department.
The National Health Performance Authority report on time spent in emergency departments in 2012 and 2013 found only 49 per cent of patients were admitted to hospital or discharged within four hours – well below the 75 per cent target and the second-worst rate in Australia.
A spokesman for Health Minister David Davis said the results were outdated.
But Western Health executive director Russell Harrison said the hospital faced a number of pressures, including inadequate facilities and a high proportion of acutely ill patients, meaning more than 50 per cent of emergency department patients were admitted to hospital.
“To have only one option for critical care across a health service with more than 122,000 emergency department presentations – representing a 7 per cent growth rate in the past year – is very challenging and made all the more so because the emergency department at Western Hospital is small and does not have enough treatment spaces to accomodate demand.”
Mr Harrison said the emergency department must be rebuilt to more than double the treatment spaces, from 28 to 59.
Western suburbs Greens MP Colleen Hartland backed the call for rebuilding. “Regardless of how fantastic nurses and doctors are, the hospital infrastructure limits their ability to deliver health care,” she said.
“The Greens are strongly backing Western Hospital’s proposal to redevelop Footscray Hospital’s emergency department and inpatient precinct, as well as constructing a dedicated women’s and children’s centre at Sunshine.”
A spokesman for Mr Davis said the latest figures showed Western Hospital improving its National Emergency Access Target (NEAT) performance.
The hospital’s March quarter result was 54 per cent, up from 44 per cent in the September 2013 quarter,” the spokesman said.
