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 calculated 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 in 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 in 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 totals exclude Albury for all percentile measures
  • Waiting times by triage category are not reported for Albury until the previous financial year closes in Q1
  • 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
  • On 23 February 2023, Monash Health opened the Victorian Heart Hospital. The data displayed for the Victorian Heart Hospital from January to March 2023 represents the period from 23 February to 31 March.
  • Care needs to be taken when assessing results and comparing them to prior periods
  • * No results are available.