Length of stay
Hospital emergency departments provide urgent care for seriously ill and injured Victorians. The length of stay is the period of time between when a patient arrives and departs from an emergency department.
Tap the buttons below for specific data about length of stay in emergency departments. You can filter by hospital.
Scroll down further for more information about the data (measures).
About the data
The above measures look at:
- non-admitted patients staying 4 hours or less
- percentage of patients staying 4 hours or less
- patients staying longer than 24 hours.
About non-admitted patients staying 4 hours or less
The number and percentage of patients treated in an emergency department who were not transferred to a hospital inpatient bed and whose length of stay was equal to or less than 4 hours.
About percentage of patients staying 4 hours or less
The percentage of emergency department patients who are admitted to hospital, transferred to another hospital for treatment or discharged within 4 hours.
About patients staying longer than 24 hours
The number and percentage of patients who have stayed in an emergency department for more than 24 hours.
Notes
- Data source: Victorian Emergency Minimum Dataset (VEMD). Data extracted on 16 April 2026.
- Apr-Jun 2025 results for Box Hill hospital erroneously include 633 presentations that occurred at and were also reported by Angliss and Maroondah hospitals. The error was only identified after data for the financial year had been finalised and therefore could not be corrected.
- In 2024–25, Northern Health’s emergency department (ED) presentation scope included telehealth (a subset of virtual care) delivered to patients at urgent care centres, residential aged care facilities, correctional facilities, and other emergency departments. From 2025–26, the scope of the Victorian Virtual Emergency Department model was expanded to include virtual care provided to patients at these locations, and therefore these presentations will be excluded from ED performance results. This scope change impacts Statewide and Northern Health’s 2025–26 ED performance results. Comparisons to prior years may not be reliable and affected measures should be interpreted with caution.
- Results for the current financial year are preliminary and may change from quarter to quarter. Final results will be available in November. Results from the previous financial year have been finalised.
- * No results are available.