"Long wait time"

Dear lacertamk53,

Thank you very much for taking the time to describe your experience in our Emergency Department. I realise that we have not responded to your comments, and that is because your Care Opinion message, along with the others that said similar messages has driven us to pull all the data on our triage times, time to treatment, people leaving without being seen and people leaving before they have finished their treatment. We have also been looking into how quickly patients get seen by the treating Doctor, and also the wait list times for the GP clinic ( this affects patients who can't get a GP appointment and go the ED). We are comparing now to how we have been in the past, and also looking at what the state average of wait times in Emergency Departments is, and what we think is "acceptable" time for our community to wait. ( I know that data sounds a bit dull but it helps look at the bigger picture to address the issue that you faced).

We have also been reviewing how we "round" or check on people in the waiting room after they have been triaged.

Your wait times are really dreadful, and I agree that this is not acceptable. Please accept my sincere apologies, to you on this occasion, and to the elderly people who on that day came and went without care or treatment. We have a fabulous facility that we have now been in for 4 months, and we have highly skilled staff. We are proud of the building and the staff, and we need to ensure the community get treatment and have waiting times that are reasonable.

Please reach out to me at ckeogh@shdh.org.au if you would like to discuss this further, and I will provide some update within the week of what we are working on to improve the waiting room times in ED.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind Regards

Chloe

Dear lacertamk53,

I am overdue with providing a response on what we were going to change to improve the waiting times in our ED. Please accept my apology- this is a heavily discussed matter, and took longer than 1 week to investigate.

This has been a very much discussed issue, and we are now focusing on improving the patients journey from entering the ED area, speaking to the reception, being triaged ( initial assessment of presenting health concern) to time in the waiting room until time being seen by the clinician.

In having this as our focus area we are trying to maintain the good care that you get when you get into the ED, so please do not think that this improvement is at the cost of the actual care you will get.

We have reviewed our process on this waiting room/triage journey, and updated it to reflect the new ED space and realigned how we provide this part of the patients journey, this includes staff keeping a close eye on the waiting room space throughout the day to ensure patients.

We are hoping to improve patients waiting times, and again I thank you for speaking up about this matter.

Kind Regards

Chloe