Emergency departments across the health district have experienced a year on year increase in patient numbers, with more than 29,600 presentations from October to December 2019.
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Southern NSW Local Health District chief executive Margaret Bennett said despite the continued rise, more than three-quarters (76.3 per cent) of patients started their treatment on time, compared with a NSW state result of 72.6 per cent.
Ms Bennett said the results from the latest Bureau of Health Information (BHI) quarterly report demonstrated the resilience of the service during the recent bushfire crisis.
"This report covers a time when large parts of NSW were ravaged by bushfires and blanketed in bushfire smoke," Ms Bennett said.
"The most urgent patients in our emergency departments were treated quicker and people had their non-urgent elective surgery earlier compared to the state results.
"Across the district there were 234 extra presentations to our emergency departments, with an increase of six per cent, or 500 presentations, in the urgent category.
"All our staff are doing a wonderful job providing the best quality in patient care in increasingly busy situations. Additionally, the district performed better than the NSW results, with urgent, semi-urgent and non-urgent surgery procedures all performed ahead of the state average."
Ms Bennett said the figures came on the back of extensive investment by the NSW Government in a number of facilities across the area, including the $120 million Goulburn Hospital and Health Service redevelopment, with an upgraded Goulburn Base Hospital as the main element of the project, and a further $30 million announced for new cancer and renal service facilities.
A total of $8 million has been set aside for the Yass Hospital redevelopment, with funding for the Braidwood Multipurpose Service (MPS) redevelopment coming from the $304 million state-wide program of works to upgrade MPS facilities in a number of rural and remote communities across NSW.
At Crookwell District Hospital $2.5 million has been committed for refurbishment works.
Goulburn Base Hospital emergency department has experienced a significant increase of 18.8 per cent in arrivals by ambulance to the hospital when compared to 2018 data, an increase of 168 presentations by ambulance. The hospital also had an increase of 7.9 per cent in ED presentations, seeing 5065 presentations, a rise of 373. The median waiting time for all of the 188 urgent and semi-urgent elective surgeries improved by five and 13 days respectively, to be ahead of the peer group results.
Queanbeyan Hospital recorded an increase in emergency department presentations of 6.3 per cent, or 354 more patients, up to 5988 compared to the same quarter in 2018. A total of 85.6 per cent of patients left the ED within four hours, ahead of the state target and the peer group average.
Meanwhile elective surgery performance at the hospital continued to improve, with 100 per cent of all of the 260 elective surgeries performed on time.
The 2019-20 budget for health district is almost $434 million. This is an increase of nearly $13 million on the previous financial year's budget.
Between mid-2012 and mid-2019, the district increased its workforce by an additional 467 full time equivalent staff - an increase of 26.4 per cent including 49 more doctors, 158 more nurses and midwives and 68 more allied health staff.
The NSW Government is also investing $2.8 billion to recruit 8300 extra frontline staff over the next four years, including an additional 5000 nurses and midwives.
