By BRIDGET COOK
CASEY’S two hospitals have treated more patients than ever, seeing to more than 10,000 patients in three months.
The latest Victorian Health Services Performance data was released last week and revealed that both Casey Hospital and Cranbourne Integrated Care Centre were performing well under pressure.
The Cranbourne centre admitted 3179 patients in the three months to the end of June, up from 2937 admissions in the previous three months.
The centre also admitted 35 emergency patients in the three month period, up from 18 the previous term.
Despite the increase in patient and emergency presentations, the centre managed to reduce the number of patients on the elective surgery waiting list from 1710 at the end of the March quarter to 1512 at the end of June.
A total of 971 patients were treated from the elective surgery waiting list in the June quarter, up on the 775 waiting list.
Casey Hospital has also improved its performance in a number of key areas including providing a total of 18,030 bed-days to patients in the latest three month term, up from 17,112 for the previous quarter.
Casey Hospital admitted 7412 patients in the three months to the end of June and 2985 emergency patients.
The hospital also saw to a total of 12,644 patients who presented to the emergency department in the three month term.
All category one emergency patients were treated immediately on arrival at the hospital department, 96 per cent of category two patients were treated within 10 minutes of arrival and 69 per cent of semi-urgent patients were treated within an hour.
The hospital treated 1531 patients from the elective surgery waiting list in the June quarter, up on 1156 in the previous term, and provided treatment to 5597 outpatients in specialist clinics, up from 5412.
Minister for Health David Davis said that the state’s hospitals were treating more patients on the elective surgery waiting lists and performing well in other areas.
“Our hospitals are now just starting to recover from the black days of past federal funding cuts and I am grateful to the efforts of our doctors, nurses, health professionals and hospital administrators in boosting their workload to provide operations for the patients who were forced to wait longer,” he said.
“Both the Australian Hospital Statistics report and our performance results confirm that Victoria is setting the standard in providing emergency department care in our hospitals.
“Our data shows Victoria is again leading the way in treating our most seriously ill and injured patients, treating 100 per cent of the 1807 category one patients immediately upon their arrival at hospital.”