There's been a dramatic increase in the number of mental health patients at Canberra's public hospitals.
ACT Health Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith believed COVID-19 was part of the reason for the spike.
ACT's latest public health service quarterly performance report, released on Friday, showed mental health patients were also staying significantly longer in hospital.
The increase has come despite a big drop in other patients attending Canberra Hospital in January to March this year.
The drop has largely been attributed to the coronavirus pandemic, with patients beginning to avoid hospitals from March.
Emergency department presentations across Canberra and Calvary hospitals were down almost 5 per cent in the quarter.
The biggest drop in patients came in the urgent and emergency categories.
This coincided with a decrease in wait times across all triage categories, with the biggest improvement for semi-urgent and non-urgent patients.
The percentage of patients seen on time in those categories improved by 7 and 4 per cent respectively.
But the territory's elective surgery performance took a dive in the same period, with most patients' wait times increasing.
There was a 13.5 per cent increase in the number of overdue patients waiting for surgery.
Despite the drop in overall patients, the number of mental health overnight bed days jumped by 22 per cent across territory hospitals.
At Canberra Hospital, they increased by 33 per cent.
The average length of stay for mental health patients also increased significantly, from 14 days in October to December, to 19 in January to March.
"We have certainly seen a very significant impact on mental health presentations, we think due to COVID-19, but we can't put our finger on why mental health presentations have increased so dramatically," Ms Stephen-Smith said.
"So we're still also exploring what all of the reasons are for that, but obviously when mental health presentations increase, it puts additional pressure on the emergency department and the rest of the hospital."
The ACT, and specifically Canberra Hospital, has struggled for years to improve its emergency department wait times.
The territory's departments are consistently ranked among the worst performing in the country.
Ms Stephen-Smith conceded some of the reduction in emergency wait times could be attributed to a drop in patients.
But she said the report showed efforts to improve emergency department and elective surgery wait times at both Canberra and Calvary hospitals was working.
"A range of measures commenced in late February to improve ED performance at Canberra Hospital. While the hospital has been required to focus on the COVID-19 response, many of these measures continue to be implemented and pursued," Ms Stephen-Smith said.
"This includes work to streamline admission processes into wards across the hospital and increasing nurse-led pathways that will enable treatment to commence more quickly."
She said before COVID-19 restrictions forced thousands of surgeries to be cancelled, the ACT was on track to deliver a record number.
"By the end of March, the ACT public system had performed 10,422 procedures compared with 10,289 at the same time the year before," Ms Stephen-Smith said.
"Unfortunately, the impact of COVID-19 has resulted in a reduction in elective surgeries since March 25 and an increase in overdue patients, which is why the ACT Government has committed to deliver at least 16,000 elective surgeries in 2020-21 to address the impacts of COVID-19."
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