Healthcare Performance, 2026

This release covers the year ending 30 June 2026. It measures actual capacity and access across state, charitable, treaty, university and private providers. National medians do not describe the journey of a patient in a remote settlement, a crowded Capital district or a state with a specialist hospital cluster.

Expenditure and capacity

Beds are not interchangeable. A medical ward cannot safely substitute for intensive care, secure mental health, maternity, paediatrics or rehabilitation without the staff and equipment. The 0.92 million unstaffed beds are concentrated in old buildings, seasonal wards and districts unable to recruit.

Workforce

Across all categories, 2.1 million funded full-time-equivalent posts are vacant or filled by short-term agency staff. Annual turnover is 13.7%, rising above 22% in home care, remote nursing, ambulance control and junior mental-health posts. Staff leave because of housing cost, compulsory overtime, injury, pension choices and the difference between funded establishment and work that can be completed safely.

Rural and northern districts offer salary supplements, housing, travel and return-of-service scholarships. They still report physician vacancy rates of 14–21% and nursing vacancy rates of 16–25%. Rotation covers emergencies but weakens continuity and transfers family and travel cost to staff.

Primary and emergency access

Telephone and video triage shorten some waits but can shift risk onto households without privacy, devices, language confidence or clinical knowledge. Remote clinics stabilise patients for air or road transfer; weather and receiving-bed availability can matter more than initial ambulance speed.

Ambulance handover consumed an estimated 24.8 million crew-hours. Hospitals hold patients because wards are full; crews wait because they cannot safely leave; uncovered areas then call neighbouring stations. State services use hospital liaison officers, cohort areas and rapid discharge teams, but each workaround moves staff from another task.

Diagnostics and elective care

Waiting is shortest in well-staffed university and metropolitan systems for common procedures, but high demand can erase that advantage. Remote residents wait for visiting specialists or travel hundreds of kilometres. Lower-income patients are more likely to defer travel, lose referral letters during moves or miss appointments because of shifts and care duties. Private payment shortens some queues and draws staff from public sessions, creating a recurring political dispute.

Population health

The gap in life expectancy between the most and least advantaged income fifths is 8.7 years for men and 6.4 years for women. Healthy-life-expectancy gaps exceed twelve years because industrial disease, disability, chronic pain and insecure housing affect daily function long before death.

Maternal mortality ranges from under 8 per 100,000 in well-served metropolitan and university states to 28–41 in the most remote districts. Distance, continuity, discrimination, late presentation and access to blood and emergency surgery all contribute. Treaty-led maternity services improve continuity where they have stable staff and transfer agreements.

Mental health and disability

An estimated 77 million residents received specialist or structured primary mental-health care during the year. A further 31–38 million had a clinically significant need without completed treatment. Child development, autism and attention assessments have median waits of 31 weeks; trauma therapy 19 weeks; routine adult talking therapy 14 weeks; and secure or intensive beds frequently require transfer outside the state.

Police, schools, ambulance crews, prisons and families provide much of the care that the health system cannot supply promptly. Crisis lines and same-day teams prevent some admissions, but they also create repeated short contacts for people who need housing, continuing therapy, addiction treatment or safe family support.

Regional operating patterns

• Capital and fast-growth states: more specialists and shorter travel, but overcrowded emergency departments, expensive staff housing and long routine primary-care waits.
• Old industrial states: high respiratory, cardiovascular, musculoskeletal and mental-health need; large hospitals but ageing estates and vacancy clusters.
• Northern and treaty regions: small facilities, expensive air transfer, strong community practice and severe specialist gaps.
• Farm and dry-basin states: long ambulance journeys, seasonal injury, pesticide and heat exposure, and reliance on market-town hospitals.
• Coastal retirement states: high chronic-care and ambulance demand with a smaller working-age tax base.

Interstate referral is a legal entitlement for unavailable specialist care, but patients encounter travel approval, record transfer, accommodation and companion costs. States sometimes delay referrals to protect budgets; receiving hospitals sometimes cap them to protect local queues. The Ombudsman treats both practices as maladministration when clinical thresholds are met.

Performance, failures and current response

Hospital-acquired serious infection affected 1.7% of admissions; medication incidents causing significant harm affected 0.31%; and 0.8% of discharged patients were readmitted within seven days for a condition judged probably preventable. These rates are based on reported and reviewed cases and understate low-harm incidents.

The Hospital Estates affair found that contractor and departmental scoring concealed urgent ventilation, fire-compartment and water-system defects. States closed 18,400 wards or units temporarily after reinspection. The Capital Heat Review found fragmented responsibility for cooling, care-home evacuation and grid priority. North Lantern added trauma, rehabilitation and prosthetic demand while drawing clinicians into military rotations.

The 2026 recovery programme funds rural housing, 310,000 training places, additional diagnostic sessions, discharge and home-care teams, and an interstate referral guarantee. Unions support staffing growth but oppose compulsory transfers and routine overtime. Finance officials argue that activity without primary and social care will simply move the queue from one part of the system to another.

Related sources

• Healthcare in the Republic explains entitlements and organisation.
• Department for Health describes federal policy and grants.
• State Ambulance Service describes emergency medical command and regional delivery.
• Demographic Ledger of the Republic controls population, life expectancy, infant mortality and bed stock.