“This tells us the system is access blocked,” Ross-Browne said. “Wards are full, which flows back to EDs, where we see patients spending long periods in waiting rooms, on stretchers, in corridors or in ED treatment spaces when they should be in a hospital bed.”
Overall, more than one in three ED patients waited too long for treatment.
“It’s been a brutal flu season,” Ross-Browne said. “It really hits us hard with big influxes in really sick patients … who have got cancer, or are elderly or frail with chronic health conditions like chronic heart failure and chronic lung disease.”
Dr Rhys Ross-Browne, NSW Faculty Chair of the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine. Credit: ACEM
One in 10 patients spent longer than 13 hours and six minutes in urban EDs. At Westmead Hospital – one of the busiest in the state – one in 10 patients didn’t leave the ED for at least 20 hours, and 84.5 per cent of patients waited longer than six hours to be admitted to hospital or transferred.
At Blacktown Hospital, one in 10 spent at least 19 hours and 30 minutes there and 85.8 per cent waited longer than six hours to be admitted or transferred.
Backlogs carry very real and dire risks for patients.
“Patients in access-blocked facilities experience high rates of mortality, morbidity, and delays in care,” Ross-Browne said.
“We know that there are huge numbers of patients in acute hospital beds across NSW that don’t need to be there, that are waiting for residential aged care or NDIS supportive accommodation and have nowhere else to go.”
Park said significant progress had been made to reduce wait times and ambulance ramping, including the recruitment of almost 500 more ED nurses, but there was still more to be done.
Park’s office reported 222,000 patients had avoided EDs in the year to June 30, 2025, thanks to Healthdirect and urgent care clinics.
“During periods of high demand, those with less urgent conditions can experience longer wait times when there are large numbers of seriously unwell patients being prioritised for emergency care,” Park said.
“I want to remind the community of your options for care outside of the hospital, which could spare you an unnecessary wait in an ED.”
More surgeries, longer wait times
There were a record 64,751 elective surgeries performed in NSW, up 9.6 per cent compared with the same quarter in 2024. They included 4033 contracted to private theatres.
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But the median wait time for patients needing non-urgent surgery was a record high 343 days – up 42 days from the same quarter in 2024.
The median wait time for semi-urgent patients was 62 days – up eight days.
About one in three (32.9 per cent) non-urgent patients waited longer than the clinically recommended 365 days compared to 17.6 per cent in the same quarter last year. One in 10 of these patients waited at least 430 days.
Dr Kathryn Austin, president of the Australian Medical Association NSW, said these wait times were unacceptable.
“The reality is stark: without more doctors in our hospitals, waiting lists will keep growing and patients will keep suffering,” Austin said.
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