Western Australia’s public hospitals are set for a $158 million cash injection over the next year.
The Federal Government this week announced a one-off funding boost for public hospitals in all states and territories to help cut waiting lists, reduce emergency department waiting times and manage ambulance ramping.
In total an extra $1.7 billion will be spent nationally, raising the Commonwealth’s total spend on state-run public hospitals to $33.91 billion in 2024-25 – an increase of 12%.
WA is set to receive $158 million of that total funding, an 11% increase to the that already budgeted.
AMA(WA) President Dr Michael Page said the funding was welcome, but more detail was needed on how it would be allocated.
“Hospitals clearly need better funding and so more funding is welcome. Is it a game-changing amount of money, $1.7 billion across the entire country? It’s not really, it’s probably a bit of catch up,” he told Medical Forum.
“In WA it won’t address our antiquated infrastructure. Our major tertiary hospitals, with the exception of Fiona Stanley Hospital, are ageing, they are not 21st century facilities, they do need significant capital investment to bring them up to speed.
“In terms of the health system having the capacity to meet the needs of the community we also need to talk about staffing and where we’re going to get doctors from other than continuing to rely on overseas migration to fill our hospitals and general practice with doctors.
“We are already so stretched as a profession and we’re not able to meet the community’s needs in terms of access to care. That’s not just about buildings and keeping the lights on, it’s also about training staff locally.”
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Health Services Union National President Gerard Hayes also said more detail was needed on how the funding would be spent.
“While this is an important announcement, we’ll take a close look at the details to ensure it delivers for health workers,” he said.
“With an ageing population and the fallout from COVID still fresh, we need governments to step up if we want to maintain our world-class health system.
“That means significant investment in areas like allied health professionals and preventative care roles that have for too long been underfunded.”
WA is already facing a shortfall of doctors and an ageing workforce is causing concern. The WA Health Workforce Strategy 2024 outlined that a fifth of the State’s medical specialists are due to reach retirement age in the next 10 years.
As the hospital system struggles to cope with rising demand and workforce shortages, wait times and ambulance ramping continue to rise.
Latest data from St John’s Ambulance WA show ambulances spent more than 5,200 hours ramped outside metropolitan hospitals in January.
Meanwhile latest emergency department data show just 48.6% of Triage 4 patients were seen within the recommended timeframe in December 2024.
The number of patients having elective surgery is also on the rise, with 85,991 admissions in WA in 2023-24, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data show.
WA had the fourth highest number of admissions in the country. Overall, the number of admissions in WA has risen 6.4% since 2019-20.
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Dr Page said waitlists across the board needed to be addressed.
“Public outpatient waitlists are something that do not get talked about enough. We know people are waiting for elective surgery, people are waiting to be seen in emergency departments, and they are waiting to be admitted to hospital,” he said.
“But the state of public outpatients is really, in some instances, a bit of a blight on the system, people are waiting years for appointments. We’d like to see a better system for GPs to be able to refer people into hospitals.”
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Announcing the funding, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his government was committed to protecting Medicare.
“This $1.7 billion funding boost will protect our public hospital system, strengthen Medicare and help build Australia’s Future,” he said.