Hospital Emergency Wait Times — methodology
Category: Health & Wellbeing · Unit: minutes (median) · Published annual
What this metric measures
Median time from arrival to treatment in public hospital emergency departments, with drill-down by state.
Why it matters: Long wait times indicate pressure on the healthcare system and can lead to worse health outcomes.
Source & provenance
- Publisher
- AIHW
- Update frequency
- annual
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
How the score is computed
The score is a 0–100 normalisation of the latest observation, compared to a baseline window. The traffic-light rating (RAG) reflects both the absolute level and the recent trend.
- Direction
- Lower is better
- Trend window
- 120 months
- Baseline
- Last 10 years
Thresholds:
{
"red_min_pct_of_baseline": 110,
"amber_max_pct_of_baseline": 110,
"green_max_pct_of_baseline": 95
}See related corrections at /corrections, or the live data and chart at https://www.australiametrics.org/metric/hospital-wait-times.