Emergency Department visits at Mid North Coast hospitals hit record high

More than 40,000 people walked through the Mid North Coast’s Emergency Department doors between October and December last year – a record high for the region.

The figure, three percent more than the final quarter of the previous year and the highest since 2010, showcases the ongoing increased demand for health services across the state’s north coast.

What happened: 40,126 residents presented at local emergency departments (ED) across the Mid North Coast in the final quarter of 2025. 

Compared to the same period in 2024, all hospitals within the local health district experienced an increase.

• Coffs Harbour Health Campus saw 13,014 attendances, an increase of 3.7 percent (or 466 attendances).

• Kempsey District Hospital had 6,985 ED presentations, an increase of one percent.

• Macksville District Hospital there were 3,935 ED, an increase of 6.4 percent.

• Port Macquarie Base Hospital had 13,981 ED attendances, a slight increase of 0.6 per cent (or 78 attendances). 

Numbers game: The figures come from the Bureau of Health Information’s (BHI) quarterly report and cover a range of health precincts in the Mid North Coast:

• Coffs Harbour Health Campus

• Kempsey District Hospital

• Macksville District Hospital

• Port Macquarie Base Hospital

• and Wauchope District Memorial Hospital

A growing trend: In a statement, Mid North Coast Local Health District Chief Executive Jill Wong said emergency departments have been under “considerable pressure”.

• “The report shows that demand for emergency and ambulance care continues to climb across our district, in line with statewide trends,” Wong said.

• According to the report, there were a total of 393,877 ambulance responses across NSW in the final quarter of 2025, a 0.6 percent increase compared with the same quarter from the previous year. 

Trending pressure: The Mid North Coast’s healthcare system is no stranger to pressure. 

• In 2025, the Mid North Coaster investigated the state of bulk billing in the region and found options could often be a 30-minute drive away for residents – or longer.

• In some towns, doctor’s books are often closed to new patients and GP retention is a challenge.

• Local hospitals are in need of increased funding with volunteer groups having to step in to fund new equipment. 

Local voice: NSW Nationals leader and Member for Coffs Harbour, Gurmesh Singh, called regional healthcare a “challenging portfolio” with “funding problems”.

• “It can be an issue of attracting the right specialists [and] the right doctors,” Singh told the Mid North Coaster. “When people aren't able to get into a GP early enough often, it means their health care can be neglected and they end up in the emergency departments, which puts a lot of additional pressure on our emergency departments here in regional areas.”

More than just check-ups: Adding to pressure on ED is an aging population across the Mid North Coast.

• “We've got elderly patients who should be discharged into a nursing home or into aged care, they're unable to do so because those facilities just don't exist, or those beds just don't exist in the number that we need so we have more people taking up hospital beds who really shouldn't be in the hospital anymore,” said Singh.

Quick process on big numbers: According to the quarterly report, more than 70 percent of ED patients were discharged within four hours and almost 90 percent were transferred from ambulance to ED staff within the 30-minute benchmark.

Easing demand on ED: MNCLHD is urging the community to “keep emergency departments and ambulances for saving lives”. 

Thumbnail images (L-R) MNLHD, Unsplash