Waiting time to treatment

Hospital emergency departments provide urgent care for seriously ill and injured Victorians. When a patient arrives at an emergency department, they are 'triaged' (assessed) for urgency and categorised on a scale from Triage Category 1 (requires resuscitation – immediate treatment) to Triage Category 5 (non-urgent – treatment within 2 hours).

Tap the buttons below for specific data about waiting time in emergency departments. You can filter by urgency category and hospital.

Scroll down further for more information about the data (measures).

About the data

The above measures look at:

  • median waiting time
  • 90th percentile waiting time.

About waiting time

The time in minutes between when a patient presented at the emergency department and when they were first seen by a nurse or a doctor for treatment.

All waiting times are sorted from shortest to longest, and the time that sits in the middle is the median waiting time (or 50th percentile waiting time). It represents the amount of time by which half of patients presenting to an emergency department were seen by a nurse or doctor.

The 90th percentile waiting time is the amount of time by which 90% of all patients presenting to an emergency department were seen by a nurse or doctor.

Notes

  • Data source: Victorian Emergency Minimum Dataset (VEMD). Data extracted on 16 January 2024.
  • Victorian Virtual Emergency Department (VVED) presentations have been excluded from the calculation of all emergency indicators.
  • Statewide results prior to 202425 exclude Albury. 
  • Data for the Oct-Dec 2024 period are incomplete across Albury Wodonga Health, Northeast Wangaratta and Goulburn Valley Health due to delays in the implementation of IT system changes at these health services. Statewide results are inclusive of these hospitals for Emergency department waiting time to treatment measures. Results are expected to be updated next quarter.
  • 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.
  • Care needs to be taken when assessing results and comparing them to prior periods.
  • * No results are available.