Hospital waits balloon, GP visits down as costs bite

Almost half all emergency department arrivals are waiting more than four hours, data shows. (Diego Fedele/AAP PHOTOS)

Sick and injured Australians are putting off seeing their local doctors and languishing in emergency departments as they struggle with medical costs.

Data released by the Productivity Commission reveals almost half all 2022/23 emergency department arrivals nationally were forced to wait more than four hours to be admitted, transferred or discharged.

Only 27 per cent of 2015/16 arrivals waited that long.

Sixty per cent of people who presented at an emergency department for mental health care in 2021/22 were seen within recommended waiting times, down from 64 per cent the previous year and 68 per cent in 2016.

Those who need elective surgery are hardly faring better.

Wait times for 50 per cent of patients nationally ballooned from 37 days in 2013/14 to 49 days in 2021/22, with NSW residents waiting up to 69 days in 2022/23.

Attrition rates among Australia's ambulance workforce hit a 10-year high in 2022/23. (Joel Carrett/AAP PHOTOS)

Ambulances are generally bucking the trend, with 90 per cent of response times improving in NSW, Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory compared to 2021/22.

But there are concerns about the sustainability of the ambulance workforce as the attrition rate increased to 4.4 per cent in 2022/23 - a 10-year high.

Concerns about the future of the health profession remain.

In 2022, 26.6 per cent of general practitioners were 60 or older and 2.4 per cent were 30 or younger - the highest and lowest proportions, respectively, of those age groups in the past eight years.

The data also reveals sick Australians are choosing to skip key medical measures as the cost of living swells.

In 2022/23, seven per cent of those surveyed by the Productivity Commission nationally reported that they had delayed or avoided seeing a GP in the previous 12 months because of the cost.

This was up from 3.5 per cent the year before and was the highest number reported since 2013.

Almost eight per cent of those who needed medication said they delayed or did not fill their prescription for the same reasons - up from 5.6 per cent in 2021/22.

But the situation becomes even more dire in the mental health space, with respondents more than twice as likely to delay seeing their psychologists and psychiatrists than their GP.

In 2022, almost one in five people delayed seeing a mental health professional, up from 12 per cent in 2020 and continuing a year-on-year increase.