Rate of Emergency Department presentations in children and young people

Emergency department presentations provide information about who received care in Australia’s public and private hospital departments. There are a range of possible reasons that some regions may have a greater proportion of children and young people presenting to an emergency department than others.

Areas where primary health services are less accessible (due to cost, geographic proximity, lack of awareness, or attitudinal factors) tend to have greater proportions of emergency department presentations due to higher rates of people seeking help at hospital for problems that would ideally be addressed in a primary care setting¹.

Therefore, proportions of hospital presentations, in combination with other indicators, can be used to help policy makers understand which regions may require greater access to primary services to provide sufficient and appropriate healthcare to children and young people.

REFERENCES

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare [Internet]. Canberra ACT. Emergency Department Care 2016–17: Australian Hospital Statistics, 2017 [cited 2018 May 30]. Available at: https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/hospitals/ahs-2016-17-emergency-department-care/contents/table-of-contents

Data Source 

Emergency Department Data Collection

Numerator

Number of presentations to public and private Emergency Departments from population aged 0-18 years

Denominator 

Population aged 0-18 years

Unit of Measure 

Per 1,000 population

Geography

SA2, SA3, LGA

Data Confidentiality

Areas with count values 1 to 4 and where population is less than 50 have been supressed.

Notes 

Emergency Department data only available from 2002 onwards.

Data are mapped according to the home address of the patient, and not the address of the hospital.

Due to low counts, rates are presented as 5 year age groupings: 0-4 years, 5-9 years, and 10-18 years