According to the AMA Public Hospital Report Card 2017, Tasmanian hospitals did not meet any of the six key measures listed.

The state failed to meet national elective surgery and emergency department performance indicators.

The percentage of category three patients seen on time in Tasmanian EDs and the amount of patients whose visits were completed within four hours both decreased in 2015-16, the report showed. 

AMA Tasmania president Dr Stuart Day said bed block was impacting access to EDs.

“The solution is looking at whole of hospital issues, which is often bed capacity,” Dr Day said.  

Health Minister Michael Ferguson said ED wait times were “unacceptable” and had been for many years.

“We have invested $5.4 million as part of our Patients First plan to start addressing this, and are consulting ... on a range of new measures, which will be announced soon,” he said. 

The report said the country’s public hospital capacity was “not keeping pace with population growth, and is not increasing to meet the growing demand for services”. 

Tasmania was one of four states which failed to meet all key measures. 

Elective surgery median waiting times increased in 2015-16 to 72 days from 55 the year prior.

“Clearing the longest waiting backlog can only be achieved by accepting a temporary increase in median wait times of the people we treat,” Mr Ferguson said. 

“Today, we have a record low waiting list,” he said. 

“Public hospitals are facing a funding crisis that is rapidly eroding their capacity to provide essential services to the public,” the AMA report said. 

It said the AMA had been waiting to have unilateral Commonwealth public hospital funding cuts reversed for almost two years, and $2.9 billion funding over three years announced in 2016 was welcome but inadequate. A spokesman for Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt said while states ran the hospital system, federal funding was increasing by about $1 billion a year.

“One of the most significant factors in waiting times for public hospitals is the practice by some states of increasing the number of private patients in public hospitals,” he said. 

“Minister Hunt will be taking this up with each of the states.”