The AFR (subscription required) is running a new series called C21 Australia trying to restart reform. It doesn’t get off to a promising start. The first column by Vern Hughes starts off with a reference to :”Australia’s ballooning hospitalisation rates, now the highest in the Western world”. This sounded like a factoid in the making, so I chased down data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, which is here (PDF file).

The data shows that beds per 1000 population, patient days per 1000 population and overnight stays per 1000 population are all declining. The only thing that is going up is the frequency of single-day treatment episodes, particularly in private hospitals, that is, of cost-effective day surgery.

There are no international comparisons in the file I’ve got, but the AIHW notes that “In most countries of the OECD, same day patients are not counted as admitted patients”.

In other words, hospitalization rates are not ballooning (except in the manner of Dick Rutan) and international comparisons need to be handled with care.