"Waiting times"

Dear Hope for the best

Thank you for sharing your story.

I would like to assure you and others reading this story that we are absolutely committed to minimising the time people both wait to receive care and how long people stay in our Emergency Department (ED). Especially if they require admission to hospital.

I also acknowledge that we have been struggling to meet our performance targets in recent times.

We are however working very hard to improve our performance. The management, doctors and nurses in our ED are working on a redesigning care project to continuously improve patient care and reduce waiting times and length of stay in the department. I wish I could say that we get it right every time: but we don't: not yet but this is our aim and our commitment to our patents and community to continuously strive to achieve this.

We have also changed the role of Nursing Coordinator during the day shifts to a more senior role called General Manager, Clinical Operations, with responsibility to work with all our clinical staff to improve the journey and experience of patients in our emergency department and where necessary their hospital stay.

Some time back we made a commitment to recruit more senior doctors to working in our ED around the clock and we have been very successful in our recruitment efforts of recent time. We now have a number of more senior doctors working in the department, and more due to commence working with us soon.

Unfortunately there will always be times when patients with less urgent conditions will wait for care and treatment. This is the role of the emergency departments that have a primary responsibility to treat people experiencing medical emergencies. However, we want this to be the exception.

Currently our performance is:

Transfers from ambulance to the ED <= 40 min: Target 90 % actual 95%

Triage 1 seen immediately: target 100 % actual 100%

Triage 1-5 seen within recommended times: target 80 % actual 75%

Length of stay <= 4 hours in the ED: target 81 % actual 74%

Length of stay > 24 hours in the ED: target 0 actual 0

I will make a further post when our next performance results are available to show you how we are improving.

In closing I am confident your hope for the best will be rewarded in the future when you experience our best. I also hope you will give us another chance.

I would be happy to receive more information from you to enable me to provide a more detailed response to your specific circumstances. You can call me on 0351438660 or by email at frank.evans@cghs.com.au.

Kind regards

Frank