This report seeks to provide clarity and understanding of the complex factors and interconnected issues that are straining the healthcare system and causing harm to patients and the healthcare workers who treat them.
ACEM will publish these detailed State of Emergency reports at regular intervals, in order to inform and guide the collaborative work between the College, the government, other Colleges and health services, as well as patients and all stakeholders, on the creation of an equitable health future for everyone.
State of Emergency: Australia’s Ageing Population (2026 release)
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State of Emergency: Australia’s Ageing Population details the growing pressure experienced in emergency departments across the country, against the backdrop of a health system that is under-resourced and unprepared to meet the needs of our ageing population.
The report provides an evidence base for a series of recommendations for governments and hospitals on whole-of-health-system approaches to alleviate the current unsustainable strain on emergency departments as our population continues to age.
In addition to federal data, the report also provides focused infographics showing key data for each state and territory.
State of Emergency: Aotearoa New Zealand (2026 release)
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Aotearoa New Zealand’s State of Emergency (SOE) 2026 is ACEM’s inaugural report on a health system in crisis.
SOE draws on a decade of national ED data and the perspectives of emergency medicine specialists across the country, highlighting the extreme pressure that hospital ED staff and patients are experiencing.
The report reveals that EDs saw a record 1.4 million patients in 2024–25, a 21 per cent increase over the past decade, with a significant rise of acutely unwell patients coming to the ED requiring urgent complex emergency care and hospital admission. Māori patients attending the ED rose by 39 per cent during this time — almost double the overall ED growth rate.
State of Emergency: Regional, Rural and Remote (2024 release)
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State of Emergency 2024: Regional, Rural and Remote (SOE24) aimed to find out what ways emergency healthcare differs in regional, rural and remote (RRR) settings compared to metropolitan areas.
Like SOE22, SOE24 is concrete data, gathered from across each of Australia’s states and territories during 2021-22, and carefully collated and analysed, to provide a comparison of emergency care and workforce between cities and RRR areas.
SOE24 discovered that the demands for emergency care per population in RRR areas is 27 per cent higher than in the cities. But the available emergency medicine specialist workforce is 22 per cent lower.
State of Emergency (2022 release)
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State of Emergency 2022 (SOE22) is ACEM’s inaugural report that presents the numbers behind the healthcare crisis.
It is concrete data, gathered from across each of Australia’s states and territories during 2020 – 2021, and carefully collated and analysed. It is the inarguable proof of what ACEM has been saying – with increasing urgency – for a very long time; the health system in Australia has never been in a worse state.
There have never been more people requiring acute healthcare, people have never had such complex health needs and the health system has never been so strained. It is bad everywhere, but it is worse in rural, regional and remote areas.