By VANESSA VALENZUELA
SUNSHINE Hospital continues to perform better than state-wide averages, according to a new report released last week.
The Victoria Health Services Performance Report for the 2012 June quarter shows that the hospital is coping with an influx of patients, despite recent Federal Government funding cuts.
Figures show that in the three months to the end of June 14,095 patients were admitted to Sunshine Hospital, up from 13,531 admissions at the same time last year.
The hospital saw 15,838 patients who presented to the emergency department within the three month period, and 100 per cent of Category 1 emergency patients were treated immediately upon arrival at the hospital.
All Category 1 urgent elective surgery patients received their operations within 30 days during the June quarter, and 91.6 per cent of patients who arrived at the hospital in an ambulance had their transfer completed within the target of 30 minutes, exceeding the state benchmark of 90 per cent.
“There are a number of areas where we are performing better than the state average and some areas where there is more work to be done to improve our performance,” Western Health CEO Alex Cockram said.
“During the quarter, Western Health admitted several hundred additional patients compared with the same quarter last year. This does have a flow-on effect in our Emergency Departments and this is shown in some of the data relating to that area of our work.”
She said treatment times for less urgent Emergency Department patients have shown some decline in the June quarter at Sunshine Hospital.
“There are significant challenges involved in meeting the benchmarks for treatment times and addressing this issue is one of my highest priorities.”
She said Western Health has implemented a range of new strategies over the past few months and she is confident these changes will lead to improvements.
