Western Australia's Hospital Emergency Wait Times Exposed in New Report
New data has revealed that Western Australia performed the worst in emergency department wait times for patients requiring urgent care within 30 minutes of their arrival. The latest Report on Government Services shows only 29 per cent of people who should be seen within 30 minutes were admitted within the clinically recommended time during the 2024-25 period.
Urgent Care Performance Lags Behind Other States
Wait times in emergency departments for patients needing urgent care is worse in WA than any other State, according to the comprehensive government analysis. The state also languished compared to all other jurisdictions in seeing semi-urgent patients, with fewer than half of WA's patients seen within the recommended 60-minute timeframe.
For less urgent cases where a two-hour wait is considered acceptable, WA emergency departments hit the mark 80 per cent of the time. However, the performance for urgent cases remains concerning for healthcare advocates and patients alike.
Critical Care Performance Shows Some Strength
WA fared better for people in vital need, seeing two out of three critical patients within 10 minutes of arrival and 100 per cent of patients who required resuscitation immediately. This indicates that while the system struggles with urgent cases, it maintains capability for the most critical situations.
Political Reactions to the Findings
Shadow Health Minister Libby Mettam called the report's findings a "shameful" reflection on the state's healthcare system. "Western Australia should be the best performing state in the nation and yet when it comes to urgent care and timely care, we are trailing the national average by 30 per cent," she said on Friday.
"29 per cent on any measure is a fail mark across any industry, but when it comes to health care, it means that patients lives are being put at risk."
Premier Roger Cook acknowledged there was work to do but said frontline workers were doing their best. "Those reports are obviously always useful, they tend to be more useful for Oppositions than Governments because they tend to look in the rearview mirror, and the current report is obviously a historical report," he said.
"I know our EDs are working hard, the doctors and nurses on the front line are doing the best they can and delivering great care for the people of Western Australia."
The Premier noted that "our performance around the four-hour rule continues to be one of the strongest in the nation, but we have challenges particularly around ambulance ramping and continuing around patient flow." He pointed to significant government investment in the hospital system as evidence of ongoing improvements.
Ambulance Response Times Lead the Nation
Meanwhile, the same report found that St John WA has the best Triple Zero call answering and critical response times nationally, returning its best statistical performance in a decade. The service achieved 97.4 per cent of calls answered within 10 seconds during the reporting period.
WA had the fastest median priority one response time out of all capital cities at 10.1 minutes and the lowest median priority one response time at 10.3 minutes, despite more incidents being reported in 2024-25. The ACT was just behind WA in response time with 10.2 minutes, with other States recording response times up to and beyond 15 minutes.
Ambulance Service Optimistic About Future Improvements
Unlike Premier Cook's cautious response, St John WA CEO Kevin Brown saw the results as an indicator of bigger improvements to come. "Our strategic outlook is to be exceptional across the board by 2030 with everything we are putting in place to serve the community but also to make it better for our team," Mr Brown said.
"We champion these hard-fought wins because it's a challenging environment to work within, but it is a meaningful one. I'm very proud of the whole team on the front line and in support, who all work together to make this happen."
The contrasting performance between hospital emergency departments and ambulance services highlights the complex nature of healthcare delivery in Western Australia, with some areas excelling while others require significant attention and improvement.
