Published 17 November 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a2608
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a2608

News

Underfunding of Australian health system leads to 1500 unnecessary deaths a year, doctors say

Ben Bland

1 Singapore

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The Australian Medical Association has warned that the country’s public health system is facing a major crisis because of underinvestment and claims that 1500 hospital patients die unnecessarily every year as a result.

It said that public hospitals urgently require a $A3bn (£1.3bn; {euro}1.5bn; $1.9bn) cash injection to meet the existing nationwide shortfall of 3750 beds and to ensure that "lives are not at risk."

Speaking after the release of the association’s annual public hospital "report card," Rosanna Capolingua, the association’s president, said that the hospital system, which is jointly funded by the federal and state governments, was currently "flat-lining."

"Our hospital report card confirms an urgent need for the federal government to properly fund our hospitals into the future so that lives are not at risk," she said.

The association said that hospital bed capacity had been cut by 67% over the past 20 years and that this reduction . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ