Anaesthetists in Australia provide over 2.6 million episodes of care each year, delivering individualised, high-quality, and safety-driven services that enable patients to undergo surgery, interventional procedures, childbirth, trauma management and complex pain treatments. This care is provided under some of the most rigorous regulatory, professional, and training standards internationally.
ASA President Dr Vida Viliunas said attempts to reduce the work of medical specialists to simplistic cost comparisons or commodity-style metrics ignore the breadth of expertise required to safely care for patients.
"Anaesthesia is not a commodity. It is a highly specialised medical discipline that requires years of training, real-time decision-making, and substantial clinical judgement," Dr Viliunas said.
"Every patient we care for is unique. Our role is to assess risk, manage pain, ensure safety, and intervene immediately if complications arise. These are not tasks that can be trivialised or reduced to soundbites."
Recent commentary has also overlooked the high levels of patient satisfaction with specialist care. Government data consistently shows that more than 95% of services delivered in the private system are provided at no-gap or known-gap arrangements, meaning patients are fully informed of any costs in advance or incur no additional out-of-pocket fees at all.
Dr Viliunas noted, "The vast majority of patients report being extremely satisfied with both the quality and the value of care provided by their anaesthetist. If a patient ever has a concern, they should speak to their anaesthetist directly. And if issues remain, there are well-established consumer pathways for review and resolution."
While attention is often directed at private sector billing, what is consistently overlooked is the mounting pressure on the public hospital system. The core challenge in public hospitals is not out-of-pocket fees—it is workforce shortages, rising demand, and insufficient funding to meet increasing complexity, particularly as the population ages and chronic disease becomes more prevalent.
Independent workforce modelling commissioned by the ASA in 2024 demonstrated that Australia could avoid a looming shortfall in anaesthesia services if governments commit to straightforward, evidence-based workforce planning measures. Implementing these recommendations would support timely access to surgery and ensure the sustainability of services across all states and territories.
However, these pressures are being further compounded by long-standing policy settings. Neither the Medicare Benefits Schedule nor private health insurance rebates have kept pace with the true cost of delivering modern healthcare. This persistent lack of indexation places strain on specialists and hospitals alike and ultimately risks impacting patient access and system capacity.
Dr Viliunas concluded by saying - "Our traditional high-quality system, with a mix of public and private care is increasingly under threat by insufficient investment in public care and inadequate Medicare rebates to patients for private care."
About us:
About the Australian Society of Anaesthetists The ASA represents anaesthetists working across Australia in private, public and mixed practice settings. The mission of the ASA is to support members and advance their skills while advocating for the anaesthesia specialty to ensure safe and high-quality patient care for the Australian public, and an accessible, equitable health system.
