Health ministers are being urged to jointly shoulder the burden for funding public hospitals as a leading emergency doctor warns of ambulance queues and overflowing waiting rooms.
State and territory governments have rejected the latest funding offer from the federal government to prop up the overstretched public hospital system.
Health Minister Mark Butler met on Friday with his state and territory counterparts, reiterating the federal government’s expectation that they would find cost-saving measures within their health systems.
In 2023, national cabinet endorsed the Commonwealth increasing its share of public hospital funding to 42.5 per cent by 2030 and 45 per cent by 2035.
State and territory health ministers said the federal government’s latest offer of a $1 billion top-up – taking the total additional funding offer to $21 billion across five years – was not sufficient and did not meet the increase required to meet the target set two years ago.
“It will simply not address the growing pressure and demand felt by our hospitals and the dedicated workforce who care for Australians every day,” they said in a joint statement.
Former vice-president of the Australian Medical Association Stephen Parnis said balancing budgets without compromising the standard of care was akin to “trying to hold the tide back”.
“It is quite stressful, I need to provide the standard of care to patients that I would want for my family but it gets hard when you’ve got waiting rooms that are overflowing, ambulances that queue up,” Dr Parnis told AAP.
“The demands on the system go up, stay up and continue to rise year in, year out.
“I have never seen demand like this ever before. There is literally no downtime in an emergency department in the public sector anymore, even at 3am.”
The senior emergency physician said the system had to keep looking for better ways of doing things, but urged all levels of government to work together.
“It doesn’t mean we can ever give up. It just means that this is a continual process of pushing back against demand and looking for better models of doing things,” he said.
“I always get a bit anxious when governments point the finger at each other, rather than seek to be co-operative and shoulder responsibility equally for these things.”
A report commissioned by the states and territories found up to one-in-10 public hospital beds is being taken by “stranded” patients needing alternative accommodation in aged care.
The state and territory health ministers said they raised concerns with their federal counterpart that thousands of older Australians were languishing in hospital beds with nowhere else to go.
Opposition health spokesperson Anne Ruston said the Albanese government had failed to negotiate in good faith.
“It has now left our hospital systems in unacceptable uncertainty over the holiday season, which we know is the busiest time of the year for emergency departments.”