The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has released its 2015-16 Admitted Patient Care report, which has found that hospital admissions continue to rise on the back of population growth and population ageing:
In 2015–16, there were about 10.6 million separations (episodes of admitted patient care) in Australia’s public and private hospitals—about 59% of these occurred in public hospitals.
Between 2011–12 and 2015–16, the number of separations rose by 3.5% on average each year—by 3.3% for public hospitals, and by 3.7% for private hospitals.
Almost 30 million days of patient care were reported for admitted patients—20.2 million in public hospitals and 9.7 million in private hospitals. Between 2011–12 and 2015–16, the number of patient days rose by about 1.9% on average each year, or about 1.4% each year after adjusting for a change in definitions for reporting care type…
In 2015–16, in public hospitals 83% of separations (5.2 million) were for public patients. Around 17% of separations were funded by another source—the majority (872,000, 14%) were for patients who used private health insurance to fund all or part of their admission.
In public hospitals, a large proportion of separations were emergency admissions (41% for public patients and 49% for private health insurance patients), while in private hospitals separations were more likely to be elective or other planned care (94% and 95%, respectively).
Between 2011–12 and 2015–16, the number of public patient separations rose by an average of 2.9% each year (and accounted for 50% of separations in 2015–16), compared with 5.5% on average each year for patients who used private health insurance to fund all or part of their admission (42% in 2015–16)…
In 2015–16, public hospitals accounted for the majority of childbirth separations (75%), medical separations (73%) and emergency admissions (92%). Private hospitals accounted for 60% of surgical separations and 56% of specialist mental health separations.
There were 2.2 million separations involving elective surgery—33% of these were in public hospitals and 67% in private hospitals.
The median waiting time for public hospital elective surgery was 38 days overall—42 days for public patients and 20 days for patients who used private health insurance to fund all or part of their admission. There can be significant variations in waiting times depending on the type of procedure…
In 2015–16, 41% of separations and 48% of patient days were for people aged 65 and over…
Between 2011–12 and 2015–16, there were large increases in separations for people aged 65–74 and 85 and over:
For people aged 65–74, separations rose by 26% overall (Figure 3.1), an average increase of 5.9% each year. This was faster than the population growth for this age group of about 4.3% each year over the same period.
For people aged 85 and over, separations rose by 22% overall, an average increase of 5.1% each year, compared with the population growth for this age group of about 3.9% each year over the same period.
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness.
Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.
