The AMA says patients should no longer tolerate failing hospitals, urging them to protest to their MPs over conditions which are more like those found in hospitals in developing nations rather than a high-income nation such as Australia.
AMA President Professor Stephen Robson says Australians should no longer tolerate falling hospital standards that are approaching developing country conditions and urged patients to contact their local politicians and demand action to lift standards.
"We can't have a community in a developed, high-income country like Australia continue to have these developing country situations in hospitals," he told the Age on Thursday.
"Every family with someone on a waiting list, people who are waiting years for an operation, or has been left waiting for care, should be at the office or their state and federal local member knocking on their door saying, 'Why aren't you doing something about this'?'"
Professor Robson identified workforce issues as key to addressing deteriorating hospitals.
He told Network 10 The Project that fixing hospitals was more complex than just allocating more funding.
Professor Robson said, "So you can have all the money in the world, but if you don't have nurses, doctors, if you don't have physiotherapists and all the people who provide healthcare, the money is fairly meaningless".
He said ambulance ramping was a sign of widespread problems affecting hospitals and resources at every level of the health system.
"Ramping tells us that resources at every level from the community through to general practice, through to hospitals, have reached capacity — they are beyond saturation," Professor Robson said.
"It's a thing that has crept up and just throwing money at it avoids the problem that it is a system-wide issue.
"So I think there are equal parts of the equation and they all need to be dealt with if we are going to solve the problem."
Professor Robson said workforce issues, including productive technologies, such as Telehealth, could be considered along with selective migration so as not to disadvantage other countries with loss of their healthcare workers.
