ABF Information Series Number 4. The cost of public hospitals - which state or territory is the most efficient?

Many comments have been made in the recent media about the efficiency of Australian hospitals. None have been made on firm evidence. In reality, an accurate comparison of jurisdictional performance is almost impossible to do using currently available data. This is because every national report on jurisdictional performance reports different results, even if they cover the same time period. This is illustrated in Table 1 using the latest available national data.