ED presentations drop, number of births increase: New data shows

The Bureau of Health Information (BHI) has released its Healthcare Quarterly report, showing activity and performance for public health services in NSW during the first quarter of 2025.

In the first three months of 2025, Narrabri Hospital recorded a slight decrease in emergency department attendances to 1572, from more than 1700 in the previous quarter.

Narrabri Hospital was one of the best performing hospitals in the district for treatments starting on time at 89.3 per cent.

On average, patients were treated and discharged within one hour and 42 minutes, at the better end of the scale in the health district with Maitland the worst performing hospital at five hours and 21 minutes.

Thirty surgeries were performed at the hospital during the quarter. Fourteen patients were on the wait list for surgery at the end of the quarter.

Narrabri Hospital recorded 351 admissions as well as 11 births.

Across the state, in the first three months of 2025 there were 52,973 elective surgeries performed in NSW public hospitals, up 3.6 per cent compared with the same quarter in 2024.

Despite this increase, at the end of March, there were 100,678 patients on the elective surgery waiting list, up 7.3 per cent (an additional 6881 patients) and just short of the record peak during the COVID-19 pandemic. Of those patients on the list waiting for surgery at the end of March, 8587 had waited longer than clinically recommended – a 151.3 per cent increase (an additional 5170 patients) from the same time a year earlier.

Patients also waited longer to receive their elective surgery. Patients who received semi-urgent surgery in January to March typically waited over a week longer for their surgery than a year earlier (up nine days to 65 days), and patients who received non-urgent surgery typically waited around a month longer (up 32 days to 322 days).

There were 785,266 emergency department (ED) attendances in January to March 2025, down 3.1 per cent from the same time a year earlier. EDs continued to see fewer patients with the least urgent clinical conditions, with the number of patients in triage categories 4 and 5 falling by 6.2 per cent and 11.7 per cent, respectively.