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Statistics Show Rise in Hospital Workloads
27 June 2003
New figures released today by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare confirm the growing load that hospital staff are being forced to carry.
The figures show that in the last financial year, public hospitals saw an increase in admissions of 2.6 per cent to four million.
In the private sector there was a 9.5 per cent increase to 2.4 million.
The national secretary of the Health Services Union, Craig Thomson, said that the figures continued the pattern of the last decade with increasing admissions and more same day treatment.
''Hospitals whether they are private or public are under more pressure than ever before,'' he said.
''These figures confirm what we are told every day by our members.
''They also show the need for substantial extra funding to be given to the states and territories by the Commonwealth to run public hospitals in the next round of Australian Healthcare Agreements.
''So far the offer from the Federal Government has fallen short of what the states say they need and the failure of the Federal Minister Kay Patterson to sit down and negotiate is a sign that she doesn't care.
''She tried to claim pressure on hospitals was decreasing after one year in which admissions did not increase but the long term trend, as she well knows, is for increasing admissions.''
According to the AIHW, the number of admissions in hospitals increased by almost 40 per cent between 1993-94 and 2001-02. Public hospitals over that time admitted an extra 20 per cent of patients while the private sector admitted 85 per cent more.
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