Maitland ED performing well as work continues

17 February 2010

The Maitland Hospital is continuing to achieve its treatment benchmarks despite being in the midst of a major site redevelopment.

Hunter New England Health Director Operations Acute Networks Michael Di Rienzo said the Area’s major hospitals, including The Maitland Hospital, were continuing to perform well and provide excellent care.

Mr Di Rienzo said figures from the last quarter showed that Maitland and other major hospitals were performing well when triaging emergency department patients.

In fact, The Maitland Hospital met or exceeded the statewide benchmark in all patient care categories in the last quarter of 2009.

The Maitland Hospital, which is undergoing a $10million redevelopment of its emergency department and front entrance, treated and cared for more than 10,000 people through its emergency department in the last three months of 2009.

“All of our major facilities once again met the State’s benchmark for Triage 1 cases, which requires 100 per cent of emergency department patients with immediately life threatening injuries to be seen within two minutes,” he said.

“Maitland and our other major facilities also demonstrated exceptional performance by exceeding the State’s Benchmark for Triage 5 cases which requires 70 per cent of less serious emergency department cases to be seen within 120 minutes.

“The majority of our major facilities continued to meet or exceed the benchmarks across the other three triage categories as well, with The Maitland Hospital also meeting or exceeding the state-wide benchmarks in all categories over the quarter.”

The hospital’s Acting General Manager Karen Kelly said the good performance results were testament to the hard work and care of dedicated Emergency Department and hospital staff who also had to contend with building works going on around them.

“Our staff are doing an exceptional job,” Ms Kelly said.

“We are essentially redeveloping and refurbishing the existing areas and we still have to manage our normal hospital operations and maintain normal service around that ongoing construction – we are still performing surgery, treating people in our busy emergency department, running clinics and caring for our patients.”

The redevelopment is expected to be completed during the last quarter of 2010. Stage 1 has already opened and includes a new front entry, foyer, reception and admissions area.

Once completed, patients, visitors and staff will see a new, larger, modern Emergency Department that is nearly double the size of the existing ED.

It will provide extra treatment spaces including acute treatment and resuscitation areas, dedicated paediatric treatment spaces, spaces for mental health patients, and a decontamination area.

Contact: Frances Holz

Phone: 4939 2216