New national figures show public hospitals are struggling to keep up with the demand for some surgeries and emergency department care.
Australia's public hospital staff are being stretched to their limits and new data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare suggests it'll only get worse.
It found almost 900 thousand patients were added to public hospital waiting lists for elective surgery from 20-18 to 19.
760,000 were admitted that same year.
Half of those patients added to lists were operated on within 41 days.
The data also shows Indigenous Australians tend to wait even longer for elective surgery, with a median wait time of 50 days.
