SOUTH West residents are encouraged to consider alternate health care avenues for non life-threatening illnesses or injuries, as new figures from the West Australian Health Department revealed the number of WA hospital Emergency Department visits to have almost doubled in the past 10 years.
According to the Health Department statistics, WA hospitals recorded 1,009,707 ED attendances in 2015, an increase of 49.2 per cent since 2005.
Locally, there has been an increase in the number of ED presentations at the Busselton Health Campus – from 17,411 in 2011/12 to 20,688 in 2014.
In 2015, abdominal pain and ankle sprain/strain were among the top 10 reasons for ED attendances.
Long-term health conditions, such as asthma and diabetes, were also suggested to be the key drivers in why people visited an ED – even more so than age, location and the cost of seeing a GP.
Health Minister John Day said approximately 130,000 of WA hospital visits recorded in 2015 could have been addressed by other health care options such as GPs, pharmacies, Healthdirect or appropriate self-assessment.
"EDs are not always the best place to be treated or recuperate from an illness and we need to ensure they remain free for emergencies,” he said.
Minister Day said hospitals and EDs nationally and internationally continued to face challenges in regard to increasing demand for their services.
"As our population grows and ages, we expect to see more patients coming to EDs with urgent and complex care needs," he said.
"While we do not want to stop people who have an urgent or life-threatening condition going to an ED, we do want to reduce the number of people visiting with non-urgent issues.
"This will ensure we can continue to treat those people in emergency in a timely manner with the appropriate level of care."
For more information, visit healthywa.wa.gov.au.
