Victoria’s public hospitals continue to operate under strain, but recent data shows some improvements in specific areas alongside ongoing system pressures. The Victorian Government’s planned surgery initiative has improved efficiency and helped maintain the lowest median planned surgery wait times in the country. However, the backlog of overdue surgeries remains the worst in Australia. Category 2 patients who are overdue for their surgery — which is 36 per cent of all patients — are waiting more than 200 days on average longer than the 90-day recommended timeframe. Emergency department performance has stabilised, but patient flow challenges persist, with nearly half of ED presentations exceeding the four-hour benchmark.
Addressing these challenges requires increased and sustained investment. Victoria’s per capita public hospital funding remains lower than in other states, limiting the ability to expand services and keep pace with demand. The Department of Health’s 2024 model budget approach led to widespread cost-containment measures, disrupting healthcare delivery and exposing the system’s vulnerability to funding shortfalls. Without stronger and more transparent funding commitments, hospital capacity will remain constrained, and improvements in planned surgery wait times may not be sustained.
Beyond investment, Victoria’s hospitals must also improve system efficiency. AMA Victoria and ASMOF Victoria have launched the Getting Rid of Stupid Stuff (GROSS) initiative (www.megaphone.org.au/p/amav), a targeted effort to eliminate unnecessary administrative burdens that take time away from patient care. Duplicative training, excessive paperwork, and inefficient compliance processes contribute to clinician burnout and reduce hospital efficiency. Embedding GROSS across Victoria’s health system will support the workforce, improve patient care, and ensure resources are used as effectively as possible.
Victoria’s hospitals need both adequate resourcing and smarter systems to deliver sustainable, high-quality care for patients.
Key Takeaways
Despite serious ongoing challenges, Victoria’s health system has seen across-the-board improvements in the four key metrics measured by the AMA. While the state has the nation's lowest median wait time for planned surgery, it experiences the longest average overdue wait time for planned surgery at an astonishing 256 days.
Table 1: Victoria’s performance 2023-24 compared to the previous year
| Cat 3 ED on time |
4-hour rule |
Median surgery wait |
Cat 2 surgery wait |
| ✔️ |
✔️ |
✔️ |
✔️ |
Table 2: Victoria’s performance 2023-24 compared to national average (below or above)
| Cat 3 ED on time |
4-hour rule |
Median surgery wait |
Cat 2 surgery wait |
| ▲ |
▼ |
▲ |
▼ |
Emergency department performance - Victoria
Victoria saw a much-needed improvement in performance across both metrics measured by the AMA in 2023–24. The percentage of urgent ED patients being seen on time increased from 61 to 68 per cent, finally returning to pre-COVID levels. Despite improving slightly from 52 to 53 per cent in the previous reporting period, the percentage of ED visits being completed in four hours or less remains below the national average.
Figure 3: Percentage of Category 3 (urgent) ED patients seen within the recommended time of under 30 minutes — Victoria
Figure 4: Percentage of ED visits completed in four hours or less - Victoria
Planned surgery performance - Victoria
Victoria’s planned surgery performance paints a varied picture. When focussing on a long-standing metric reported by the AMA, median waiting time for planned surgery, the state remains a nation leader at the impressively low 33 days. However, this metric is impacted by the distinct weighting of admissions towards Category 1 surgery, which accounted for 41 per cent of admissions with 100 per cent of these patients admitted on time.
In Victoria, the average wait time for each patient that has not been admitted within the clinical timeframe is alarmingly high at 297.2 days for Category 2 (recommended to occur within 90 days) and 708 days for Category 3 (recommended to occur within 365 days). These facts point to a genuinely broken system, one that leaves tens of thousands of Victorians languishing on planned surgery waitlists for dangerous lengths of time.
Figure 5: Median waiting time for planned surgery (days) - Victoria
Figure 6: Percentage of Category 2 planned surgery patients admitted within the recommended (90 days) - Victoria
Public hospital expenditure - Victoria
Figure 7: Per person average annual percentage increase in public hospital funding by government source (constant prices) — Victoria
|
2012‒13 to 2022‒23 |
2012‒13 to 2017‒18 |
2017‒18 to 2022‒23 |
| Federal |
2.11% |
2.39% |
1.83% |
| Victorian Government |
6.86% |
4.35% |
9.42% |
Figure 8: Public hospital funding, per person, by government source (constant prices) - Victoria
The most recent public hospital funding data are from 2022‒23. In Victoria, most public hospital funding (67 per cent) comes from the state government. This is much higher than the national average of 61 per cent, even as most state and territories continue to take on most of the funding burden for our public hospital system.
