Summer alcohol-related emergency department workload and occupancy in Australasia 2019–2022

Abstract

Objective

Alcohol is a major public health issue and the ACEM funds regular ‘snapshot’ surveys of the prevalence of alcohol-related presentations in EDs. The present study uses these data to investigate ED occupancy and alcohol- and methamphetamine-related presentations at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods

Survey-based point prevalence study of EDs in Australia and New Zealand conducted at 02:00 hours local time on the Saturday of the weekend before Christmas in 2019–2022. Primary outcomes were ED occupancy, the number of alcohol-related presentations and methamphetamine-related presentations in each ED at the time of survey.

Results

Seventy eight of a possible 152 hospitals answered all four surveys (51%, 95% confidence interval 43–59, individual yearly response rates ranged from 70.5% to 83.3%). The mean number of alcohol-related presentations in EDs at the snapshot time was 4.2 (95% confidence interval 3.2–5.2) in the 2019 survey and 3.8 (3.1–4.6) in 2022 with no significant variation over time. There was also no change in methamphetamine-related presentations which occurred at a lower level. There was a major increase in reported total ED occupancy – from 31.4 to 43.5 in Australia (P < 0.0001, paired t test) and from 22.8 to 38.7 in New Zealand (P = 0.0001). Subgroup analysis showed that both the number being treated and the number waiting to be seen increased, with little change in the number in observation units.

Conclusions

The present study demonstrates that the COVID-19 pandemic did not affect summer alcohol-related ED presentations in Australasia but was associated with an unsustainable increase in ED crowding.