ACEM report bears out AMA’s hospital logjam findings

A report into the ailing performance of Australia’s Emergency Departments from the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine brings further attention to the issues the AMA has been raising in our Clear the hospital logjam campaign. 

Running since the start of this year, the AMA’s Clear the hospital logjam campaign has consistently highlighted the problems in our over stretched, chronically underfunding public hospitals. Our social media platforms amplify media coverage every day showing how the flawed hospital funding system plays out for patients. Wednesday’s Advertiserreported on a hospital in south Adelaide forced to convert storerooms into ED treatment spaces due to lack of beds.

The latest salvo in the AMA campaign was launched this week with a deep dive into  mental health presentations to EDs. (see separate story in this edition of Rounds)

We welcome the ACEM report, State of Emergency 2022, which bears out the findings the AMA has been campaigning on and which were analysed and published in the 2022 AMA Public Hospital Report Card.

The AMA has issued a public hospital report card every year since 2007. In addition to the performance of emergency departments, the AMA report card also examines elective surgery and public hospital funding – giving a fuller picture over the last 15 years.

ACEM’s report is described as its ‘inaugural annual report that presents the numbers behind the healthcare crisis’, and the findings are shocking and make for confronting reading.

It found the health system in Australia has ‘never been in a worse state’. It says “There have never been more people requiring acute healthcare, people have never had such complex health needs and the health system has never been so strained. It is bad everywhere, but it is worse in rural, regional and remote areas. If you need emergency care in Australia right now, you will wait longer than ever before. If you need to be admitted to hospital, you are more likely than ever before to get stuck in the emergency department due to a lack of hospital beds, or a lack of appropriate, accessible support in disability or aged care.”

The ACEM report says in 2020−21, Australia had 8.8 million presentations to emergency departments. This is the highest number of annual presentations ever recorded. Also, in the past five years, demand for emergency care has risen 14 per cent despite the population growing only 5 per cent. In this same time, available hospital beds have decreased by 4 per cent. It breaks down the data by state and compared regional with metro hospitals.

For those interested in additional information, the AMA campaign presents hospital performance data in a handy “hospital logjam finder” where your own local hospital performance can be viewed by entering a postcode.