Report on Government Services 2025

Public hospitals provide a range of services, including:

• acute care services to admitted patients
• sub‑acute and non‑acute services to admitted patients (for example, rehabilitation, palliative care and long stay maintenance care)
• emergency, outpatient and other services to non‑admitted patients
• mental health services, including services provided to admitted patients by designated psychiatric/psychogeriatric units
• public health services
• teaching and research activities.

This section focuses on services (acute, subacute and non‑acute) provided to admitted patients and services provided to non‑admitted patients in public hospitals. These services comprise the bulk of public hospital activity.

In some instances, data for stand‑alone psychiatric hospitals are included in this section. The performance of psychiatric hospitals and psychiatric units of public hospitals is examined more closely in the ‘Services for mental health’ section of this report (section 13).

Total recurrent expenditure on public hospitals (excluding depreciation) was $96.1 billion in 2022‑23 (table 12A.1), with 94% funded by the Australian, state and territory governments and 6% funded by non‑government sources (including depreciation) (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2024a).

Government real recurrent expenditure (all sources) on public hospitals per person was $3,649 in 2022‑23; an increase of 1% from 2021‑22 ($3,616) (table 12A.2).

Hospitals

In 2022‑23, there were 700 public hospitals in Australia – three more, overall, than in 2021‑22 (table 12A.3). Although 68.6% of hospitals had 50 or fewer beds (figure 12.1), these smaller hospitals represented only 12.1% of total available beds (table 12A.3).

Hospital beds

There were 65,051 public hospital beds available for admitted patients in public hospitals in 2022‑23, equivalent to 2.5 beds per 1,000 people (table 12.1 and tables 12A.3–4). Information on the availability of hospital beds in relation to the population provides some information about the accessibility of public hospital services. However, the concept of an available bed is becoming less important in the overall context of hospital activity, particularly given the extent to which hospitals provide services for patients who usually reside in other areas of the state or territory, in other jurisdictions, or who receive services through different modes of care (such as virtual care or ‘hospital in the home’ care models) (AIHW 2024b). Nationally, the number of beds available per 1,000 people increased as remoteness increased (table 12A.4). The patterns of bed availability across regions may reflect the availability of other health‑care services and patterns of disease and injury (AIHW 2024c).

Admitted patient care

There were approximately 7.1 million separations from public (non‑psychiatric) hospitals in 2022‑23, of which over half (56.1%) were same day patients (table 12A.5). Nationally, this equates to 246.8 separations per 1,000 people (figure 12.2). Acute care separations accounted for 94.1% of separations from public hospitals (table 12A.10).

Variations in admission rates can reflect different practices in classifying patients as either admitted same day patients or non‑admitted outpatients. The extent of differences in classification practices can be inferred from the variation in the proportion of same day separations across jurisdictions for certain conditions or treatments. This is particularly true of medical separations, where there was significant variation across jurisdictions in the proportion of same day medical separations in 2022‑23 (table 12A.7).

In 2022-23, on an age‑standardised basis, public hospital separation rates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were markedly higher than the corresponding rates for all people. For private hospital separations, rates were higher for all people compared to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (though separations are lower for private hospitals compared to public hospitals) (table 12A.8).

Non-admitted patient services

Non-admitted patient services include outpatient services, which may be provided on an individual or group basis, and emergency department services. Nationally in 2022‑23, 41.1 million non‑admitted patient care service events were provided for public patients, 25.8% less than in 2021-22 (55.4 million) (table 12A.11). Of these, 38.2 million individual service events were provided to outpatients in public hospitals (a 27.9% decrease from 2021‑22) and 849,029 group service events were provided (a 24.8% increase on 2021‑22). Differing admission practices across states and territories lead to variation among jurisdictions in the services reported (AIHW 2024d).

There were 9,018,401 presentations to emergency departments in 2023‑24 (table 12A.12).

Staff

In 2022-23, nurses comprised the single largest group of full‑time equivalent (FTE) staff employed in public hospitals (figure 12.3). Comparing data on FTE staff across jurisdictions should be undertaken with care, as this data is affected by jurisdictional differences in recording and classifying staff.