Canberra’s hospitals are facing an impossible task to reach the level expected of a first world health system, the Australian Medical Association (AMA) has warned.
The latest snapshot of public hospital performance, released by the AMA, has given the ACT a mixed review.
The percentage of urgent cases seen within the recommended time has risen to 50 per cent, while fewer people are having to wait more than four hours to be seen in Canberra’s two emergency departments.
But Andrew Miller from the ACT branch of the AMA said despite the raised figures the territory is still below the benchmark on all measurements.
“They’re targets that were set for being desirable of a first world country with a first world health system,” Dr Miller said.
“We set ourselves a task. We set ourselves a benchmark. We’re not meeting those.
“We’re on our way towards them but we’re certainly not to the schedule that we set ourselves a number of years ago.”
Elective surgery wait times brings hope for Canberra’s hospitals
Dr Miller said a highlight from the report was waiting times for elective surgery. He suggested it showed what can be achieved with a concerted effort.
“We’re actually one of the only jurisdictions, if not the only jurisdiction, which has actually succeeded in getting an overall significant improvement in waiting times,” he said.
“But once again there’s still room for improvement, if you look at the category two elective surgery patients you’ll see that the numbers being admitted within the desired 90 days is actually dropping.
“Our emergency departments aren’t doing as well as they could do. We rank among the lower states in terms of both our four-hour clearance and our category three triaging.”
The AMA’s report warns of a “perfect storm” to hit Australian hospitals as a result of a tightening in Commonwealth funding, but Dr Miller says the ACT is unique in that regard.
“We are one of the only jurisdictions that is getting an increase in dollar terms over all of the projections … so that in 2017-18 we’re getting more money then we were in 2014-15,” he said.
But he agreed that the level of funding was still not enough.
“It’s one thing to peg back money, but when the demand is still anticipated to grow … you can see there’s going to be a disconnect between the funds that are available and the community demand,” Dr Miller said.
“[The ACT does not] have any opportunity for enjoying economies of scale. So that makes funding our hospitals very difficult.”