The Bureau of Health Information’s quarterly review, released on Wednesday, showed ED waiting times generally fell across the state despite an increased workload over winter.

And that was a story repeated in Bathurst where the number of patients attended emergency for non-urgent ailments including small cuts and abrasions jumped to 527 between July and September this year, up from just 194 12 months earlier.

However, the median waiting to start treatment on non-urgent cases remained steady at 14 minutes, though one-in-20 patients was left waiting 137 minutes or more to see a medical specialist.

There was also a rapid rise in the number of patients attending the ED with emergency conditions such as chest pains or severe burns (698 for the quarter, up from 485 in 2015) while there were falls in other triage categories.

Overall, the number of patients in emergency fell 1.8 per cent from 6267 for the quarter in 2015 to 6156 in 2016.

Most patients (71.7 per cent) were treated in emergency and discharged the same day while 21.4 per cent were admitted to hospital.

More than five per cent left the ED before their treatment was completed.

The BHI figures also looked at waiting times for elective surgery at Bathurst Base and found patients awaiting a tonsillectomy again faced the longest delay.

The average waiting time for a tonsillectomy was 310 days, up from 223 a year earlier and 14 weeks longer than the average waiting time at similar hospitals across the state.

However, the number of patients on the waiting list for a tonsillectomy fell 31 per cent from 135 to 93 over the same 12-month period.

The waiting time a total hip replacement grew from 86 days to 160 days  but the wait for a total knee replacement almost halved from 325 days to 174.

The number of patients on the waiting list for hip and knee replacements both jumped by more than 50 per cent over the 12-month period, reflecting the hospital’s growing reputation as a regional hub for orthopaedic surgery.