The number of patients presenting at Victoria’s emergency departments has risen 53 per cent in the last decade, with young children the most frequent visitors, new research shows.
Between 2002 and 2014, the group most represented in emergency departments were newborns to four-year-olds, followed by those aged 20 to 24.
The research was carried out by the University of Melbourne, Royal Children’s Hospital, Northern Melbourne Medicare Local and Victorian Government.
Lead author Professor Gary Freed said the findings challenged the popular notion that emergency care policy should be focused on adults and the elderly.
“The magnitude and growth of ED presentations by children have not been recognised previously,” he said.
“This issue is of significant importance to the community as well as specialty children’s hospitals.
Professor Freed said two thirds of presentations were for “low urgency conditions”.
“Why parent are presenting with their children to the emergency department especially for low urgent conditions is really unknown,” he said.
“It raises a number of questions: why aren’t they going to a GP, why aren’t they using a nurse on call?
“What we can now do is study those children and their parents to try and find out why they’re there.
“We need to be able to assess whether these are issues of GP availability for children with low urgency sick conditions, whether parents have a financial inability to pay, whether parents feel more comfortable or trust the emergency department more than other sources of care.”
Professor Freed said the findings identified an important area for focused attention when addressing future demand for emergency department services.
“We know for the elderly that a great proportion of their presentations to the emergency department are for higher urgency conditions, but again, in absolute numbers, even for the higher urgency conditions, more children zero to four years of age present to emergency departments in Victoria than any other age band,” he said.
“I believe that we need to make sure that we look at and address the needs of all age groups of Australians.
“We cannot give too much emphasis on one age group or else we run the risk of missing important public health and health service issues.”