All metropolitan public hospitals miss out on green light

The Australian Medical Association’s (AMA) ‘clear the hospital logjam’ searchable tool uses a traffic light system to indicate the percentage of patients that received care within the clinically recommended time and covers 352 public hospitals across Australia. If 95% of patients or greater received care within the clinically recommended time, a green smiley face appears. However, for all categories measured by the AMA, no metropolitan hospitals received a green light.

Within the tool, an amber grimace indicates that 85–94% of patients received care on time (or that their performance was unknown), while a red sad face means less than 84% of patients received care within the clinically recommended time. The “grim” performance, according to the AMA, intensifies the need for a new National Health Reform Agreement (NHRA) to address the logjam. Hospitals receiving five or more red lights numbered 67, while there were only nine with no red lights.

This performance marks a “significant deterioration from 2020–21”, when 54 had five or more red lights and 26 had no red lights, the AMA said. “This is a crisis that was developing long before the COVID-19 pandemic, and the inaction from several consecutive governments at all levels is hitting hard — and it’s the patients who suffer the most,” AMA President Dr Danielle McMullen said, noting that years of chronic underfunding had led to ambulance ramping, long waits for essential surgery and overflowing EDs.

“Public hospitals are the great equaliser in Australian society — no matter how much or how little money you have, whether you live in Sydney, Broome, Cairns or Ceduna — we all turn to our public hospitals in an emergency,” McMullen said. “We all need our public hospitals to perform, but as our hospital logjam finder shows, the system is struggling from coast to coast.”

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Red lights tally

Six or more

6 SA*

6 NSW

5 WA

4 NT

4 Vic

2 Qld

1 ACT

Five or more

23 NSW

11 Vic

4 Tas

1 ACT

^{*Identified by the AMA as “under the most pressure”}

The AMA observed that the figures for NSW indicate that the state hospital system remains under pressure, while Vic’s figures show signs of systemic pressure. In the NT, both Darwin hospitals received three red lights for elective surgery. In the above tally, all public hospitals in the ACT and Tas are represented. Smaller community hospitals or hospitals that don’t provide performance reports of activity about all services are excluded from counts of poor performers.

You can search the hospital logjam at www.ama.com.au/clear-the-hospital-logjam.

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Image credit: iStock.com/baona