Elective surgery queues getting shorter

More people are going to hospital but waiting queues for elective procedures are getting shorter, new figures reveal.

The latest report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) shows public and private hospital admissions have risen by 16 per cent since 2004-05, to more than eight million admissions in 2008-09.

Public hospital emergency departments are also seeing a rising number of patients with some 7.2 million visits in 2008-09, an increase of about 4.6 per cent every year for the last four years.

Elective surgery admissions are also on the rise, increasing from 1.6 to 1.8 million over four years from 2004-08.

The public hospital elective surgery median waiting time in 2008-09 was 34 days, the same as the previous year but up from the 29 days in 2004-05.

However, the proportion of those waiting more than a year for elective surgery has decreased to less than three per cent, compared with almost five per cent in 2004-05.

"This combination of results - more public elective surgery being done, average waiting time levelling out, fewer long waits and increased admissions for elective surgery from waiting lists - suggest improving access to public elective surgery," AIHW spokesman George Bodilsen said in a statement.

Health Minister Nicola Roxon said this showed that hospitals had benefited from extra government funding.

"The biggest improvement is in the amount of elective surgery performed, with 38,239 more surgical admissions in 2008-09, than in the last full year of the former Government in 2006-07," she said in a statement.

"The AIHW has noted that after the Rudd government targeted elective surgery investments, public elective surgery increased by 3.1 per cent, over and above the previous average increase of 1.7 per cent."

Ms Roxon said there were also 2200 more doctors, an eight per cent increase from 2007-08, and 4781 more nurses, a 4.5 per cent increase.

She said this showed the government's ambitious health reform plans had started to deliver real improvements, although there was more work to be done.

"The government's 50 per cent increase in funding for hospitals began to flow on July 1 last year, meaning that patients in hospitals right now are benefiting from that extra support," she said.