The updated campaign features an expanded hospital logjam finder tool.
Ahead of the May federal election, the AMA is urging voters to use our online tool to check how their local public hospital is performing.
We have released an expanded " hospital logjam finder " tool, which now covers 352 hospitals across Australia.
The results highlight the grim state of public hospital performance in Australia and intensify the need for a new National Health Reform Agreement (NHRA) to address the logjam.
The logjam finder uses a traffic light system to indicate the percentage of patients that received care within the clinically recommended time. It reveals no metropolitan hospitals received a green light for all categories measured by the AMA. Sixty-seven hospitals received five or more red lights and only nine had no red lights. This shows far too many Australians are waiting too long for care in emergency departments and too long for planned surgeries.
The AMA has also released costed proposals that outline the amount of investment required by all levels of government to lift our public hospitals out of logjam.
AMA President Dr Danielle McMullen said years of chronic underfunding had led to ambulance ramping, overflowing emergency departments and long waits for essential surgery.
"This is a crisis that was developing long before the Covid-19 pandemic, and the inaction from several consecutive governments at all levels is hitting hard - and it's the patients who suffer the most," Dr McMullen said.
The AMA is calling for immediate action to lift hospital capacity to "catch up" to underlying demand. Over the next four years, the AMA estimates an additional $12.5 billion of federal funding is required, as well as an additional $15.3 billion in state and territory government funding under a new NHRA.
