Overview

Monitoring the performance of our health system helps to ensure that services delivered in Australia are effective, efficient, appropriate and are achieving good outcomes for patients and the wider community. Reporting of safety and quality aspects also ensure that health care is being delivered in line with current professional knowledge and standards. Together, this kind of information can help policy makers and consumers make informed choices about available services. 

More reports and statistics on health care quality & performance can be found under AHPF Health indicators, MyHospitals and International comparisons. 

Latest findings

Around 7% of all hospitalisations were classified as potentially preventable More than 1 in 3 people (37%) used a Medicare-subsidised allied health service in 2017–18, up from 32% in 2013–14 4 in 10 women had a diagnostic imaging service in 2017–18 compared with 3 in 10 men The number of specialist visits per person has risen by 6% over 5 years Rates of potentially preventable hospitalisations varied greatly across local areas In 2017–18, 38% of people in Northern Sydney PHN area saw a specialist compared with 14% in the Northern Territory The number of GP services per person has risen by 8% over 5 years Use of after-hours GP visits was higher in city PHN areas (28% of people) than regional PHN areas (16%) in 2017–18 There were nearly 748,000 potentially preventable hospitalisations in Australia in 2017–18 Nearly 10% of all hospital bed days were for potentially preventable hospitalisations

Latest reports

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Australia's health performance

The latest on Australia's health and health system performance

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Highlights

94%of all Australian children aged 5 were fully immunised in 2017
18% of ‘golden staph’ bloodstream infections in 2017–18 were resistant to commonly used antimicrobials
More than 9%of all hospital bed days in 2016–17 were for potentially preventable hospitalisations
About 2.0%of hospitalisations experienced a potentially preventable complication
Search and compare performance information for more than 1,000 Australian public and private hospitals
431,704people at the end of 2015 were alive who had been diagnosed with cancer in the previous 5 years
72%of emergency department patients in 2017–18 were ‘seen on time’, including almost all of those requiring immediate care
Australia's Health Performance Frameworkprovides a navigation tool to support reporting on Australia’s health and health care performance