Access to hospitals

Providing access to appropriate and timely health care is an integral component of hospital care. This section explores several measures of access to Australia’s hospitals including waiting times for selected services. 

Explore more information about access to hospitals via the links at the bottom of the page.

How is the accessibility of hospitals measured?

An accessible hospital system delivers healthcare that is timely, geographically reasonable and provides services in a setting where skills and resources are appropriate to a person’s medical need (WHO 2006).

Accessibility of Australia’s hospitals can be measured in a number of ways, including:

• waiting times to access services
• geographic location, socioeconomic status and Indigenous status of the people that use hospital services, and
• number and location of services and hospitals.

Admitted patient care

In 2019–20:

• 5.8 million hospitalisations were for females (52%), and 5.3 million hospitalisations were for males (48%)
• separation rates were higher for women (454 per 1,000) than men (424 per 1,000), particularly between the ages of 15–44
• men were more likely than women to have a separation at the age of 55–64 (631 and 567 per 1,000, respectively) and onwards. As they got older, the difference in the separation rate for men and women increased even further
• Indigenous Australians were more likely to have a separation from a public hospital than a private hospital (510,000 and 71,100 separations, respectively).

Emergency department care

In 2020–21, emergency department waiting times differed by where a person lived:

• Median waiting times were highest for people living in Major cities (18 minutes), and lowest for those living in Outer regional and Remote areas (15 minutes).
• patients living in Remote areas had the shortest median waiting times for Emergency triage category
• patients living in Major cities had the longest median waiting times for Urgent, and Semi-urgent categories.

Elective surgery waiting times

In 2019–20, rates of admission and waiting times for admission from public hospital elective surgery waiting lists, differed by remoteness of area of usual residence and SES:

• people living in Remote areas (35.1 per 1,000) had the highest rate of admissions from elective surgery waiting lists, followed by Very remote areas (29.9 per 1,000)
• Major cities had the lowest rate (22.4 per 1,000 population)
• the time within which 50% of patients were admitted for their awaited procedure varied by remoteness area of the patient’s usual residence, ranging from 34 days in Remote areas to 45 days in Outer regional areas
• the time within which 50% of patients were admitted ranged from 15.0 days for people living in areas classified as the highest level of socioeconomic disadvantage to 29.2 days for people living in areas classified as the lowest SES group.

Where do I find more information?

More data on Admitted patient care 2019–20 is available to explore in the Info and downloads section.

Data on Emergency department care 2019–20 can be found in the Emergency Department care theme page or the data downloads section.

More information on elective surgery waiting times and procedures can be found in the Elective Surgery theme page which primarily uses the National Elective Surgery Waiting Times Data Collection.

Definitions of the terms used in this section are available in the Glossary.

Reference: WHO (2006) Quality of care: a process for making strategic choices in health systems. WHO, Paris.