Spending on Australia’s public hospitals has increased by an average of $3 billion every year in the past decade. Yet hospitals are still under strain. Ambulances are ramping outside emergency departments, waits for surgery are getting longer, and staff say they’re burning out.

And demand will only grow as Australians gets older and sicker. There’s no doubt governments will have to spend more - but with ever more pressure on budgets, they’re going to need to be smarter about spending.

On this podcast, health experts Peter Breadon and Elizabeth Baldwin discuss their new report, Smarter spending: Getting better care for every hospital dollar, and how to fix hospital funding in Australia.

Read the report: https://grattan.edu.au/report/smarter-spending-getting-better-care-for-every-hospital-dollar/