30 June 2010
The State of Our Public Hospitals June 2010, report, out today,highlights the need to address the pressures on Australia's public hospital system, according to the Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association (AHHA) today.
"This Report shows that public hospitals continue to provide high quality care to consumers, within the appropriate timeframe in the vast majority of cases," Ms Prue Power, AHHA Executive Director said.
"86% of elective surgery patients were seen within the recommended timeframe and the average waiting time for emergency treatment was only 23 minutes. These findings will give Australian's confidence that their public hospital system is there for them whenever they require medical care.
"However, to improve these figures we need to address the pressures on the public hospital system. These include the growing population, combined with health workforce shortages, which means that hospitals are being asked to treat more people every year with fewer doctors and nurses. The lack of adequate aged and community care services also puts additional pressures on hospitals which end up treating people whose conditions could have been prevented or managed in the community.
"The findings of this report reflect research from the Productivity Commission demonstrating that public hospitals are efficient and that the main problem with our current system is that they have not been adequately funded to meet rising community demand.
"Additional research from Dr John Deeble has shown that over the 12 years to 2008, public hospitals have increased their public patient admissions per person covered by about 47%. His analysis found that in the last four years overall demand for acute admission has increased 15-20% however the rate of available beds in Australia has remained steady.
"This situation is putting public hospitals under increasing pressure and is simply not sustainable within their current resource constraints.As part of the COAG health reform processes, we need to change the way in which hospitals are funded to enable their resource base to grow in line with consumer demand. We also need to ensure that the proposed primary care reforms are implemented successfully so that they reduce demand for hospital care," Ms Power said.
For further information/comment: Ms Prue Power 0417 419 857