Doctors Condemn NSW Health's Data Practices: 'Concealing Results Doesn't Solve the Issue'

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More people are going to a hospital in Australia’s biggest healthcare system, as doctors claim critical figures are being hidden from the public.

NSW hospital admissions have hit record levels, with more than 515,000 admitted patient episodes in the quarter from April to June 2025, the latest Healthcare Quarterly report by the Bureau of Health Information says.

Nearly 65,000 elective surgeries were performed across NSW, the highest number in any quarter since the bureau started reporting in 2010.

The number of patients on the waiting list at the end of June who had waited longer than clinically recommended for their surgery dropped to 2,534 — down from 8,588 at the end of March 2025.

But Australian Medical Association NSW president Kathryn Austin said stark figures were buried in the report released on Wednesday and questioned the bureau’s presentation of data.

She pointed to how only 66.1 per cent of non-urgent surgeries, which should be completed within a year, were performed on time, marking a sharp decline from 82.4 per cent in the same quarter in 2024.

“Hiding these results does not make the problem go away — it only undermines confidence in the system and makes it harder to drive necessary change,” Austin said.

The association said one in 10 patients spent longer than 13 hours and six minutes in the emergency department in urban hospitals, a trend it said was unacceptable.

But the Bureau of Health Information said it applied the same criteria of “objectivity, fairness and meaningfulness” when highlighting key findings each quarter, regardless of the nature of the results.

“The decrease in the percentage of elective surgeries performed on time measure is a direct result of the large number of patients who had been overdue receiving their surgery during the quarter,” a bureau spokesperson told AAP.

“Surgery waiting time information remains available in the key findings, along with graphs clearly presenting waiting times and the percentage of surgeries performed on time.”

NSW Health Minister Ryan Park said even though hospitals continued to experience high demand, the government was working towards relieving pressure.

“We’re investing in more staff, more hospitals and more beds, more quickly, and we’re seeing lower wait times and less ramping,” he said.

“While lower ED wait times and ramping are promising, there is still more to be done.”

He attributed the drop-offs to a recruitment drive of nearly 3,000 full-time health workers as retention rates return to pre-pandemic levels, and an uptake of urgent and virtual care health services.

A man in a navy suit and a patterned tie holds his hands up, palms forward, as if to stop something. He stands at a podium with microphones from various news outlets in front of him, speaking with a serious expression on his face.

NSW Health Minister Ryan Park said that, despite hospitals continuing to experience high demand, the government was working towards relieving the pressure. Source: AAP / Dan Himbrechts

Emergency departments had 785,084 attendances, with a slight drop of 1.3 per cent from the same quarter in 2024.

Bureau acting chief executive Hilary Rowell said: “Fewer patients with less-urgent conditions presented to EDs. However, there were record numbers of patients presenting with more serious conditions.”

The report notes nearly 80 per cent of patients who arrived by ambulance were transferred to ED staff within 30 minutes — up 5.6 percentage points compared with the same time in 2024.