Health care snapshot

In 2020/21, SMHS staff provided the following care and treatment:

• Our emergency departments treated in excess of 218,000 patients. More than 47,000 emergency patients were children aged between 0 and 15 years.
• The baby boom continued with more than 5,900 babies born during the year. 63 of these deliveries were multiple births.
• More than 173,000 people were discharged from our hospitals during the year.
• Our surgical teams performed more than 47,700 elective and 16,300 emergency surgeries.
• Our intensive care teams treated more than 2,900 patients.
• 123 patients had their lives changed by receiving a transplant:
  • 10 heart transplants
  • 15 lung transplants
  • 1 heart and lung transplant
  • 34 kidney transplants
  • 63 bone marrow transplants.
• More than 74 per cent of the SMHS workforce received a first dose COVID-19 vaccine, and more than 68 per cent received a second dose COVID-19 vaccine.
• Over 84,000 COVID-19 swab tests were completed across SMHS sites. Of those tested at a SMHS COVID clinic, 6 people tested positive to COVID-19.
• SMHS COVID clinics completed close to 1,700 COVID-19 swab tests during the busiest day of the year.
• More than 179,500 people attended in excess of 825,000* outpatient appointments. In excess of 204,000 occasions of care were provided via telehealth or telephone, collectively saving:
  • 30 million km in travel – or 19 return trips to the moon
  • 495,000 hours, or 20,623 days, or 57 years of travel time
  • 102,000 hours sitting in outpatient waiting rooms
  • $918,000 in parking costs
  • $5,568,327 in fuel costs
  • 7,495 tons of CO2 being emitted into the atmosphere
  • 468 hectares – or 275 x Perth stadiums – of forest per year to recover the CO².

Read our Annual Report to learn more about the scope of our services. 

Note
Comparison cannot be made to the outpatient snapshot data reported in the SMHS Annual Report 2019/20. The methodology used continues to be refined, and in some instances a different dataset was used to provide more precise statistics.

* Includes activity for metropolitan wide Rehabilitation in the Home and radiation oncology services.