President's update: Public Hospital Report Card, Indigenous Health, and more

I hope last weekend you were all able to celebrate the women in your lives on International Women’s Day. This year’s theme was Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls which is particularly relevant to health where we still have disparities to overcome. There were some great government investments last year, but we still need more clinical research involving women, better support for diagnostics and interventions specific to women and workplaces focused on gender equity.  Women’s health is not a niche issue — it’s a national priority, and we’ll keep pushing for a fair system not just on days of recognition, but every day.

The biggest news this week was the release in Brisbane yesterday of our 2026 national Public Hospital Report Card. No surprises here — while there have been some modest improvements in some areas, overall performance is significantly worse than a decade ago. Patients are still waiting too long for care.

Emergency departments remain under intense pressure nationwide, with the proportion of patients completing their ED visit within four hours falling to its lowest level on record, with only 53 per cent of patients meeting the national benchmark. This is the result of hospitals in logjam. ED staff doing the best they can, but unable to move patients through a logjammed system.

On elective surgery, while the median wait time has fallen (by just a day...from 46 days to 45) for the second year running, patients are still waiting far longer for planned surgery than they were a decade ago. The proportion of Cat2 surgeries performed on time remains below historical levels and patients who miss those timeframes often wait months longer than advised. 

At the heart of these issues is rising demand, with an ageing population and stagnating capacity. Bed availability for older Australians has fallen to its lowest on record which makes no sense when we’ve had a predictable increase in our aged population and we know older people are more likely to need hospital care. 

Our report reveals a system buckling under severe stress, and I know this takes a huge toll on all of you working in our public system. 

It is unclear what impact the new National Health Reform Agreement will have on arresting the decline in performance.  We are urging governments to release the NHRA, and to work collaboratively to get the funding flowing. 

In a sign of how important this report card is, I was joined at the launch by Tim Nicholls, the Queensland Minister for Health and Ambulance Services.

Our meeting afterwards was a great opportunity to discuss national health workforce issues. Like many states, Queensland has a large regional population and struggles with workforce distribution. We talked about the importance of training doctors in regional areas, and the critical need for a national health workforce agency.

Also, this week I co-chaired the Taskforce for Indigenous Health with Australian Indigenous Doctors’ Association President Dr Jonathan Newchurch. I really value our MoU with AIDA, and the taskforce meetings provide a great opportunity for connection, updates on the important work of our organisations as well as NACCHO and amsa, and coordination on shared priorities. Throughout 2026 we will continue shared work focused on infectious diseases, particularly the ongoing syphilis outbreak, medication supplies for First Nations communities, custodial health and climate health. We’ll also continue to collaborate to support First Nations medical students and doctors throughout their careers.

A reminder that our Indigenous Medical Scholarship would welcome your donations. 100 per cent of donations flow straight to students, and last year, thanks to the generosity of our donors, we were able to award three scholarships. Each scholarship supports a medical student throughout the remainder of their degree. You can find out more on our website.

I hope you all have a great weekend, and I’ll see you here again next week!