How is hospital activity measured?
Hospital activity is measured by the number of services provided by hospitals. These include:
- Hospitalisations in public and private hospitals for admitted patient care
- Presentations to public hospital emergency departments
- Service events for non-admitted patient in public hospitals
- Admissions from elective surgery waiting lists in public hospitals.
Overall, activity in all sectors of the Australian hospital system is increasing, reflecting an increasing demand for services.
Emergency department presentations
In 2019–20, emergency department activity was impacted by COVID-19. Further information about the impact of COVID-19 on emergency department activity is available in the Emergency department activity section of the MyHospitals site.
Nearly 23,000 people on average sought treatment in public hospital emergency departments each day in 2019–20. This figure increased 3.2% on average, per year, in the 5 years from 2014–15 to 2018–19.
However, between 2018–19 and 2019–20, presentations to emergency departments decreased by 1.4%, and presentations per 1,000 population decreased over this period, from 329 to 324 presentations per 1,000 population.
Almost 80% of emergency department presentations occur between 8am and 10pm.
In 2019–20, 23% patients sought treatment for injury and poisoning-related diagnoses, down from 25% in 2018–19, and 8% for a respiratory disorder .
The most common diagnoses were Abdominal and pelvic pain, Pain in throat and chest, Injury of unspecified body region and Viral infection of unspecified site.
Hospitalisations
In 2018–19, there were 11.5 million hospitalisations in Australia.
Hospitalisations have risen by an average of 3.3% per year between 2014–15 and 2018–19. This year-on-year increase is greater than the average growth in Australia’s population over the same period (1.1%).
The average annual growth over this period was greater for public hospitals (3.7%) than for private hospitals (2.6%).
Same-day hospitalisations (where the patient does not stay overnight) have risen faster than overnight hospitalisations, largely due to increases in same-day hospitalisations for sub-acute and non-acute care. Same-day hospitalisations rose, on average, 4.8% per year in public hospitals and 3.2%, on average, per year in private hospitals between 2014–15 and 2018–19. In contrast, overnight hospitalisations rose, on average, 2.6% per year in public hospitals and 1.1%, on average, per year in private hospitals over the same period.
Non-admitted patient services
Non-admitted patient services are provided by outpatient clinics in Australia’s public hospitals. These services include patients seeing specialist medical practitioners or allied health practitioners, or having diagnostic or other procedures. In 2018–19, 39 million service events were provided in outpatient clinics. Of these:
- 46% (17.9 million) were in allied health and/or clinical nurse specialist intervention clinics
- 29% (11.1 million) were in medical consultation clinics
- 16% (6.4 million) were for diagnostic services
- 8% (3.3 million) were in procedural clinics.
Where do I find more information?
More information, Appendixes and caveat information, and data tables are available in the Info & downloads section.
Definitions of the terms used in this section are available in the Glossary.