Every year 1,500 Australians pay with their lives for overcrowding in public hospitals, the nation's peak doctors' group said as it warned taxpayer-funded services were on the brink of collapse.
The Australian Medical Association (AMA), in its annual report card, said the commonwealth and every state and territory government had been given an F for fail on public hospital services.
The report card painted a damning picture of public hospitals straining under the pressures of overcrowding, unacceptable waiting times in emergency departments, and elective surgery delays.
The AMA intensified its call for an immediate $3 billion injection of federal funds - indexed at between eight and nine per cent - for public hospitals, as negotiations for new Australian Health Care Agreements (AHCAs) heat up ahead of this month's Council of Australian Governments meeting.
The next COAG meeting will be held in Canberra on November 29.
AMA president Rosanna Capolingua said such an investment would fund an urgently needed 3,750 extra beds and return public hospital funding to a 50-50 balance between the commonwealth and states and territories.
Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon is keeping mum on the contents of the new agreements, which will replace the existing five-year funding arrangements.
She said it was imperative, given the global financial crisis, that the health budget was spent wisely.
"It would be naive for any government or any minister not to be closely, acutely aware of the pressures that global circumstances put us under," she told reporters in Canberra.
"But it just makes us more determined that every health dollar we spend has to deliver results to the community."
The AMA report argues the new AHCAs must take into account a likely influx of extra patients after a projected 500,000 people dump private health cover as a result of changes to Medicare levy surcharge thresholds.
It shows many hospitals run at well over the 85 per cent safe occupancy level - including every public hospital in NSW - and one third of patients in emergency departments have to wait longer than 30 minutes for attention.
Dr Capolingua said there were about 1,500 unnecessary deaths each year due to overcrowding in public hospitals, based on a 2003 study.
"Over time, you hear the stories state by state, ambulance ramping, ambulance bypasses, patients in corridors, patients on floors, patients in chairs being treated," she told reporters in Sydney.
"This is a ridiculous scenario. How much more do we need to hear about this before we do something to stop it?
"We have ranked all the states, remembering of course that the overall ranking for the states is F for fail, and then it is how badly they have failed underneath that F."
In terms of the number of beds per 1,000 people, the Northern Territory comes out on top, while Victoria is the worst performer.
The Northern Territory spends the most on public hospitals per person, with the ACT second and NSW third. Queensland spent the least.
NSW was the top performer in emergency department performance.
Ms Roxon said she agreed with the AMA that hospitals were under pressure and sheeted home the blame to the Howard government.
"We believe that this is a direct result of having more than a decade of a commonwealth government that was not prepared to work with the states and territories to tackle these problems," she said.
The commonwealth currently shoulders 40 per cent of the cost of public hospitals, while the states and territories contribute almost 55 per cent.
Ms Roxon said the community would understand it was unrealistic to expect an immediate change in the funding situation to a 50-50 split.
"We need to take account of changing practices which mean that more care is provided outside the hospital ... and the commonwealth picks up the lion's share of that funding," she said.
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