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Fact Sheet - The state of our public hospitals, June 2007 - Victoria

Snapshot of our public hospitals in Victoria during 2005-06.

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Overview

• In 2005–06, Victoria had 143 public hospitals.
• The number of public hospital beds, per 1,000 weighted population, fell to 2.3 in 2005–06 from 2.5 in 1998–99. Victoria was below the national figure in 2005–06.
• In 2005–06 Victoria ranked lowest for the amount of public hospital recurrent expenditure per person in the country ($588, an increase of 41 per cent in real terms from 1998–99).

The following table shows how Victoria compared to other states and territories across key performance measures:

Performance measure	Ranked
Public hospital beds – number per 1,000 weighted population	7th
Public hospitals – proportion accredited	1st
Public hospital recurrent expenditure per person, weighted population	8th
Public patient admissions in all hospitals – number per 1,000 weighted population	2nd
Elective surgery – percentage of people seen within the recommended time	2nd
Elective surgery – percentage of admissions that waited longer than one year	4th
Elective surgery – median waiting time	4th
Emergency department – percentage seen within the recommended time	1st
Emergency department – median waiting time	1st

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Admissions

The number of public hospital admissions, per 1,000 weighted population, in Victoria increased from 207 in 1998–99 to 239 in 2005–06.

Public hospitals	2005-06		1998-99
	Victoria	Australian Total	Victoria	Australian Total
Admissions per 1,000 weighted population	239	210	207	207

• Victoria’s public hospitals admitted 1,272,844 patients. Of these, 88 per cent were public patients.
• The proportion of public patient admissions in all Victoria’s hospitals (including private hospitals) was 56 per cent.
• The average length of stay for overnight patients in Victoria’s public hospitals in 2005–06 was 6.5 days, the same as in 1998–99. The length of stay is just below the national figure.

Elective Surgery

• In 2005–06, more than 134,500 patients underwent some form of elective surgery procedure as public patients in Tasmania.
• Overall, 84 per cent of public elective surgery patients in 2005–06 were seen within the recommended time.
• The median waiting time for elective surgery in the state remained at 32 days, the same as the national median waiting time.

Elective surgery	2005-06		1998-99
	Victoria (%)	Australian Total (%)	Victoria (%)	Australian Total (%)
Overall percentage seen in recommended time	84	81	91	90
Category 1: within 30 days	100	83	100	91
Category 2: within 90 days	72	74	86	86
Category 3: within 12 months	90	88	94	93

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Emergency Departments

• In 2005–06, there were more than 1,200,000 emergency presentations to larger public hospital emergency departments in Victoria.
• Of those, around 77 per cent were treated within the clinically appropriate period, which is above the national average of 69 per cent.
• The median waiting time to be seen was 19 minutes, five minutes shorter than the national median.

The following table shows how Victoria performed in 2005–06 across the five emergency department triage categories:

Emergency departments	2005-06	1998-99
	Victoria (%)	National (%)
Overall percentage seen in recommended time	77	69
Triage Category 1: Need for resuscitation	100	99
Triage Category 2: Emergency	83	77
Triage Category 3: Urgent	79	64
Triage Category 4: Semi–urgent	71	65
Triage Category 5: Non–urgent	89	87