Admitted patients are patients who undergo a public or private hospital’s formal admission process to receive treatment and/or care. The types of care provided include surgical care, medical care, intensive care, newborn care, rehabilitation care, palliative care, and mental health care.
Explore more details on the care provided to admitted patients via the links at the bottom of the page.
Impact of COVID-19 on hospital activity in 2019–20 and 2020–21
The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic had a profound impact on hospital activity generally. The range of social, economic, business and travel restrictions, including restrictions on some hospital services, and associated measures in other healthcare services to support social distancing in Australia resulted in an overall decrease in hospital activity in 2019–20. Many of these restrictions were eased in 2020, leading to an increase in overall hospitalisations in 2020–21.
In the 5 years between 2014–15 and 2018–19, hospitalisations had increased 3.3%, on average, per year—3.7% per year in public hospitals and 2.6% per year in private hospitals.
Following the 2.8% decrease in hospitalisations from 2018–19 to 2019–20 due to restrictions on some types of hospital services, hospitalisations increased 6.3% in 2020–21 to 11.8 million, an increase of 3.6% in public hospitals and 10.5% in private hospitals. This is most likely due to the lifting of restrictions that were implemented to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus more generally as well as easing of restrictions on hospital activity.
In addition, many jurisdictions implemented programs to fast-track elective surgeries and provided increased funding for surgeries which were delayed because of the restrictions put in place on elective surgery in 2019–20 as part of the Australian Government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.