Little improvement in public hospital capacity and performance despite extra Commonwealth funding

There was little improvement in public hospital capacity and performance across Australia in 2009-10, despite extra Commonwealth funding, according to the AMA Public Hospital Report Card 2011, released today.

AMA President, Dr Steve Hambleton, said that public hospital performance in every State and Territory is well below targets for access to emergency departments and elective surgery set by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG).

“It is very much business as usual as public hospitals across the country are struggling to meet demand,” Dr Hambleton said.

“They currently do not have the capacity to meet the demands of an ageing population that is also experiencing chronic conditions that inevitably require acute care.

“Only 378 new beds were opened across Australia in 2009-10.  There are now only 2.6 public hospital beds for every 1000 people, which is down 3.5 per cent from the previous year.

“The median waiting time for elective surgery increased to 35 days.

“With no real increase in the capacity of public hospitals, patients will wait in emergency departments to be admitted to wards and wait longer for elective surgery.

Dr Hambleton said that elective surgery waiting time data were being manipulated by the practice of creating ‘hidden waiting lists’.

“There are people who are waiting to see a public hospital specialist to be assessed for surgery who are not counted in the waiting list data,” Dr Hambleton said.

“The clock starts on waiting times for elective surgery only after a patient has seen a specialist and is booked for surgery.

“For example, someone who has waited for their hip surgery, according to the ‘official’ count, may already have waited an additional six months from the time they received their GP referral to the time they first saw a specialist.

“We need robust, long-term data collection so that we can have proper year on year monitoring and analysis of hospital capacity and performance.

“The AMA welcomes the establishment of the National Health Performance Authority and we hope that its reporting will ensure that State and Territory Governments are accountable for effective spending of funds provided by the Commonwealth.”

Dr Hambleton said it was pleasing that the number of administrative staff as a percentage of total public hospital staff was falling.

Other key findings of the AMA Public Hospital Report Card 2011 include:

• The number of public hospital elective surgeries performed in 2009-10 across Australia was 609,089 – only 14,080 more than in 2008-09.
• 21,927 of the patients admitted for elective surgery in 2009-10 had waited for more than a year for their elective surgery.
• While 77 per cent of category 2 elective surgery patients (those who should be admitted within 90 days) were admitted on time, this is well below the new performance benchmark of 100 per cent set under the new COAG health reform agreement.
• Median waiting times for elective surgery have substantially deteriorated over time.  In 2009-10, the median waiting time was 35 days.  Eight years ago, the median waiting time was only 27 days.  Each year, the waiting time gets longer.
• Every State and Territory performed well below the 2009-10 national performance target of 70 per cent for public hospital emergency department Category 3 patients.  These patients should be seen within 30 minutes.  Performance nationally was only 64 per cent, which means that over a third of these patients were not seen within the recommended time.  The new national target of 80 per cent in 2011-12 will be even more difficult to achieve if there is no increase in public hospital capacity.
• There were welcome increases in the rates of tissue and organ donation compared to last year, which will have resource implications for hospitals.

A copy of the AMA Public Hospital Report Card 2011 can be found here.

3 November 2011

CONTACT:         John Flannery                       02 6270 5477 / 0419 494 761

                        Kirsty Waterford                    02 6270 5464

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