As hospital sizes vary considerably, the number of beds is a better indicator of the availability of hospital services than is the number of hospitals. However, the range and types of patients that different hospitals treat (or their ‘casemix’) can affect the comparability of hospital bed numbers. Hospitals with different casemixes will have differing proportions of beds available for specialised and more general purposes.
Beds counted are those available for use—with appropriate staffing. The counts are not of physical beds, not all of which may be in use. Chairs used for some same-day treatments, such as chemotherapy, are also included.
In 2009–10, there were:
- 54,812 beds in public acute hospitals
- 2,088 beds in public psychiatric hospitals
- 2,260 beds in private day-only hospitals
- 25,778 beds in other private hospitals.
The number of hospital beds increased by 3.3% between 2005–06 (80,828 beds) and 2009–10 (84,938 beds), an annual average increase of 1.2%.
There was a relatively large increase in beds in other private hospitals, compared with public acute hospitals (Figure 1).
The relatively large decrease for public psychiatric hospitals reflected the continuation of the long-term trend to deinstitutionalise services for people with mental illness, and the trend to integrate specialist psychiatric services with public acute care hospital services.
Figure 1: Average annual change in the number of beds, by type of hospital, 2005–06 to 2009–10
