Hospital general manager Ian Power, answering questions at the opening of the $1.8 million upgrade of the emergency department, said the exercise was planning ahead for the next decade.

“Our planning period is through to 2027. That involves some changes,” Mr Power said.

“Our challenge is to manage what we have at the moment and the significant pressures coming into the emergency department on a daily basis.”

He said the department was seeing sicker patients.

“We have a triage system of category one to five,” he said.

“In the last 12 months we have seen a significant increase in category one and two patients, patients with life threatening illnesses.

“We also have a lot of cluster presentations. It’s not uncommon to get five or six ambulances in a 45 to 50 minute period.

“The challenge for us is to better manage that when it happens.

“It happens regularly and our staff is pretty focussed on trying to improve our performance there.”