EMERGENCY department presentations at Bathurst Health Service jumped by more than 70 per cent during winter as thousands of people heeded health advice to be tested for COVID-19.
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The latest Bureau of Health Information figures, released on Wednesday, show 12,526 people presented at emergency in the three months from July to September this year, up from 7077 for the same time last year.
That equates to about 60 extra people presenting each day after the NSW Government urged people showing even mild flu-like symptoms to get tested for COVID-19.
Those quick-visit COVID tests also had a massive impact on the emergency department's performance figures, with the median stay in ED just 34 minutes across the three-month period compared with two hours and 27 minutes in 2019.
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Western NSW Local Health District acting CEO Mark Spittal said he was "immensely proud" of the way hospital staff had responded to the coronavirus crisis.
"This large increase [in ED presentations] can be explained by attendances for COVID-19 testing provided by the emergency department staff," Mr Spittal said.
"There was a significant improvement in the time to treatment starting for patients in the ED.
"The median time to treatment for an emergency decreased by two minutes down to six minutes, three minutes faster than the average for Bathurst's peer group [similar hospitals].
"The number of patients starting their treatment on time improved, up by eight percentage points to 88.3 per cent, compared with the same quarter in 2019."
While emergency presentations experienced a huge spike, it was largely business as usual for other areas of the Bathurst hospital.
Hospital staff continued to perform urgent elective surgeries and Mr Spittal said 100 per cent were on time.
"There was also an increase in the number of elective surgeries performed, up 1.8 per cent, from 543 in the same period last year to 553 this year," he said.
But the average waiting time for people on the elective surgery list grew significantly during the September quarter, from 16 days to 21 days for people needing urgent elective surgery; from 50 days to 63 days for people needing semi-urgent elective surgery; and from 292 days to 352 days for people needing non-urgent elective surgery.
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