The AMA has released its latest report ranking Australian hospitals’ performance, Australian public hospitals in logjam: 2023.
The report revealed that only three out of 201 Australian public hospitals are delivering care within the recommended times — down from 15 hospitals a year ago.
AMA President Professor Steve Robson said the logjam in Australia’s public hospitals has worsened, with continued workforce shortages, increased ambulance ramping, emergency departments beyond capacity and hospital beds unavailable when they are needed.
“The AMA’s report, Australian public hospitals in logjam, which is based on Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data, paints a worsening picture of emergency department and essential surgery performance,” Professor Robson said.
“We have nurses, doctors, and healthcare workers who are desperate to provide care for Australians, but the need the resourcing to do that.
“They are also more than statistics, they are human stories, and they are stories of suffering and pain of people waiting for care, waiting for urgent emergency department care, surgery and treatments around the country.”
In 2020–21, only 15 out of 201 hospitals received ‘green lights’ against all performance indicators, but in 2021–22, only three hospitals, which were based in regional areas, achieved a green light: Young Hospital in NSW and South Coast District and Riverland General hospitals in South Australia.
A green light denoted 95% of patients receiving care within the clinically recommended time, red indicated a level of performance of 84% or below, while orange fell between these figures on the spectrum.
Hospitals without sufficient data to report, condition specific hospitals, hospitals that did not report on both ED and elective surgery performance, or those with a different reporting basis were excluded.
In terms of WA’s metropolitan hospitals, Perth Children’s Hospital was the best location to attend an ED, even though it still only earned a red light from the AMA, while Peel Health Campus was the best place to go for an elective surgery, earning an orange light with a score of 92.
Overall, Armadale-Kelmscott Memorial Hospital was ranked as having the best level of performance, followed by King Edward Memorial Hospital, while Fiona Stanley Hospital was the worst, narrowly beating Royal Perth to the bottom by less than one percentage point.
- King Edward Memorial Hospital – scored 69.2 for ED performance and 90 for elective surgery
- Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital – scored 68.8 for ED and 79.6 for elective surgery
- Osborne Park Hospital – did not submit information for ED but scored 80.6 for elective surgery
- Joondalup Health Campus (Public) – scored 57.8 for ED and 86.3 for elective surgery
- Royal Perth Hospital (Wellington St Campus) – scored 57.2 for ED and 69.6 for elective surgery
- Fremantle Hospital – did not report for ED but scored 75.66 for elective surgery
- Armadale-Kelmscott Memorial Hospital – scored 69 for ED and 90.6 for elective surgery
- Rockingham General Hospital – scored 57.4 for ED and 69 for elective surgery
- Peel Health Campus – scored 60.2 for ED and 92 for elective surgery
- Fiona Stanley Hospital – scored 57.8 for ED and 68.3 for elective surgery
- St John of God Midland Public Hospital – scored 60 for ED and 82.3 for elective surgery
- Perth Children’s Hospital – 76.4 for ED and 72.3 for elective surgery
With National Cabinet meeting on 03 February 2023 to discuss Australia’s healthcare system, Professor Robson urged Australians to visit the campaign website, share their hospital stories, look up the performance of their local hospital, and write to their local MPs.
“All you need to do is search AMA logjam and our website will come up. This is a national problem. It needs an urgent national plan. It needs urgent funding injection, and we need a long-term plan to deal with this,” Professor Robson said.
“It is really important to understand that we need to focus not on the hospitals that are doing well, but to look at the problems that are affecting the major hospitals that are serving most of the country and are so familiar to all the Australians who live in our cities and major regional areas.
“There is no doubt that access to healthcare is worse in regional Australia and it is a growing and important problem for regional Australians, but also we need to focus on those hospitals that are not able to meet their targets currently; and what we need to do to help the nurses and doctors who work in those hospitals – all healthcare workers in those hospitals – to achieve and do what they want to do which is to care for Australians.
“When National Cabinet sits down on Friday, we want ministers to tackle the backlog of surgeries that we estimate will top half a million at the end of June, because it is devastating for every person waiting and dealing with months and months of pain.”
Professor Robson said the AMA has also been calling on the federal government to increase its share of hospital funding from 45 to 50%, and to remove the annual cap on activity.
“We are calling for a new national plan funded by all governments but with an up-front advance payment provided by the Commonwealth to support state and territory governments to expand their hospital capacity, including the workforce, to address the elective surgery backlog,” Professor Robson said.
“It is unlikely hospitals will be able to expand their capacity to address this backlog if there is no intervention.
“For their part, the states and territories need to commit to improve hospital performance by re-investing that extra five per cent. And both need to fund additional ongoing performance improvement, capacity expansion, and ways to reduce avoidable admissions.
“There are multiple different situations in the country, and every hospital will have a different situation. We need to be flexible in the way we deal with this, but overall, the principles are the same: to recognise the problem, to have a national plan, to increase funding urgently, and to look at long-term funding reform that delivers for Australian patients.”