The BHI's quarterly report, which classifies the central west as the region taking in Bathurst, Lithgow, Mudgee, Lachlan Valley, Dubbo and Orange, reveals the median response time for P1A's - the highest priority emergencies - increased to nine minutes during the October- December 2021 quarter.

That's one minute longer the same time last year and three minutes longer than the same quarter in 2019.

P1A cases have a ten minute benchmark.

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The data shows the volume of P1A responses in the region also increased substantially in the October - December quarter, up by 64 percent in Bathurst, 48 percent in Orange and 15 percent in Dubbo.

The new data comes ahead of planned statewide industrial action by the Australian Paramedics Association (APA) on March 21 as part of its campaign for pay increases and an additional 1500 paramedics in NSW.

The APA says there are not enough crews to cover workloads in the region and across the state.

According to NSW Ambulance, response times have been impacted by the increased use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) by paramedics during the pandemic. Adding to this has been the increased length of cases due to more infection control procedures.

NSW Ambulance Chief Executive Dr. Dominic Morgan said the service continued its surge planning and implementation to support staff and the community.

"On top of more paramedics and infrastructure, we brought our Virtual Clinical Care Centre online years earlier than planned to help some patients with lower acuity needs safely remain in the community allowing our frontline paramedics to focus on life threatening emergencies," Dr Morgan said.

"These measures support the 750 paramedics and Control Centre staff recruited as part of the State-wide Workforce Enhancement Program (SWEP)."

Meanwhile, the new data shows better performance from the district's hospitals during the December quarter - the period that followed the peak of the Delta outbreak and the emergence of the Omicron variant.

At Orange, 83.3 per cent of patients that presented to the Emergency Department started their treatment on time, an improvement of 3.5 percentage points compared with the same quarter in 2020, while more than nine out of 10 patients were transferred from paramedics to the ED staff within the 30-minute benchmark - an improvement of 2.7 percentage points.

All urgent elective surgery was performed on time.

"The severity of the COVID-19 outbreak in Western NSW continued to create extraordinary challenges during the final quarter of 2021, but we are immensely proud of all our staff for their effort during this period," WNSWLHD Chief Executive Mark Spittal said.

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