Western Australia had the longest emergency department wait times nationally in the last year, according to new data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
On average, 90% of patients who visited an ED were seen within 229 minutes. In some other states the wait time was less than half of that.
The wait time for the majority of patients across all Australian hospitals was 118 minutes.
In WA, just 46% of patients were seen on time according to their triage category, with this number trending down over the past five years from 58% in 2020/2021.
Nationally, 67% of patients were seen on time for their triage category, including 100% of those requiring immediate care (resuscitation).
AMA (WA) President Dr Kyle Hoath said he was not surprised that WA had the longest ED wait times in the country, but he was disappointed.
“We all know the winter that we’ve had, and we all know that something has to be done. It’s not surprising, not acceptable, but really not a surprise at this point,” he said.
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WA hospitals saw almost 5000 additional presentations on the previous year, with ED presentations increasing 0.5%. However, this was slightly less than the national increase of 0.8%.
WA Minister for Health Meredith Hammat said the figures were of concern but said WA was dealing with increasingly complex patients.
“I think what those figures are telling us is that the increase in demand is not always about additional people, it is about the complexity that people have when they come to hospital and we’ve seen much more of that,” she said.
“People presenting with not just one health condition but sometimes multiple conditions that need to be managed.
“Of course those wait times are a concern, but we are seeing more complexity.”
The minister reiterated the governments ongoing work to reduce ambulance ramping and increase hospital capacity in the state, however Dr Hoath said more needed to be done.
“We’ve been consistent in our concern that the number of beds and number of services available to West Australians was insufficient,” he said.
“There just wasn’t enough and that’s really what led to the issue with our record ramping issues.”
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He said the AIHW figures highlighted that further investment was needed to avoid repeats of 2025’s winter, which also saw some elective surgeries postponed to manage hospital capacity.
Patients are also spending more time in the ED at WA hospitals, with the time most patients spent in the ED rising from 9h22mins last year to 10h 49mins this year.
Nationally, 6% of patients waited longer than 365 days to be admitted for elective surgery. In WA 5.3% of patients waited longer than a year for an elective surgery.
Some 102,845 West Australians were added to the waitlist in the last year, while 89,649 underwent their surgery and were removed from the list.
This follows some years of variability in elective surgery numbers in Australia due to disruptions to hospital services caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The new figures come as the AMA warned Australia’s public hospitals were in crisis. National President Dr Danielle McMullen cautioned “the time for band-aid solutions and patch up approaches was over”.
“The next National Health Reform Agreement (NHRA) must fix the crisis, or to put it simply, patients will die,” Dr McMullen said.
The AMA is calling on the federal government to meet its commitment to reach 45% of total funding, by 2030 rather than the originally agreed 2035.
It also called for the cap on funding growth to be lifted.
Conservative estimates put the cost of the investment at $34.7 billion across five years, and potentially up to $49.8 billion if public hospital costs continue to increase at a rate of 5.6% each year.
Based on AMA projections, states and territories will need to find $17.6 billion, and potentially up to $36.7 billion, if hospital costs continue to grow at that rate.
On December 11 Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced an additional $21 billion over five years for public hospital funding.
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