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

doi:10.1136/bmj.a2608

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Ben Bland

¹Singapore

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; €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 …