More than half the Australian population depends on the public hospital system, yet hospitals have not been given sufficient resources to meet their needs. The lack of resources threatens the quality and safety of the system. The degradation of the public hospital system is not acceptable and cannot be justified given the health state of Commonwealth and State/Territory budgets.

This AMA Public Hospital Report Card 2007 provides independent analysis of relevant hospital issues, including: capacity, performance, access and equity, productivity and funding. In preparing the report card the AMA has mostly used publicly available information which assesses public hospital performance against government-determined performance standards and criteria.