Hospitals
Private hospitals and beds
There is no current comprehensive dataset describing private hospitals in Australia.
The most up-to-date data source, the List of declared hospitals, provides a listing of hospitals that are recognised by the Minister for Health to be a hospital under the Private Health Insurance Act 2007. According to this listing, there were 633 private hospitals as of 10 September 2025.
The most recent comprehensive data source available for private hospitals and private free-standing day hospital facilities is for 2016–17 and is drawn from the Private Health Establishments Collection undertaken by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
Based on data from that collection, the ABS report that, in 2016–17:
- there were 657 private hospitals in Australia
- there were 34,300 licenced beds – representing 1.4 beds per 1,000 population
- 3,310 (9.6%) of these beds were in Private free-standing day hospital facilities.
The most recent data available for private hospitals and private free-standing day hospital facilities is for 2016–17, based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) in the Private Health Establishments Collection (PHEC).
The PHEC data were discontinued after the 2016–17 reference period and therefore data for 2017–18 onwards are not available.
References
Australian Bureau of Statistics (2016-17), Private Hospitals, Australia, ABS Website, accessed 9 September 2025.