I wonder if this was a bit of median beat up... people dying waiting? Was a report done by the coroner who would be the one to comfirm this?
Reminds me of a media report only a couple of years ago, when one hospital here had a dramatic increase in ER waiting times over a couple of weeks, but they failed to mention major renovations were the main cause.
Urgent cases would have still been seen, they just didn't have enough cubicles and some waited in the corridors, but media insinuated care was compromised
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ER waits are generally short too, or within the recommeded wait times, except according to the media (coughs and cold excluded here).
In regards to chemo I know The Royal Adelaide Hosptital has a 0 wait time (this has just been confirmed to me by the person that recommended the particular Professor Oncologist to my friend who had the cancer), but perhaps there have been isolated areas where for some reason waits increased for a time, for whatever reason in your area. I don't know, but this isn't the norm.
There are good and bad in both private and public. Yes even private has negatives over public.
I've seen it first hand where totally unecessary surgery is performed, or a doctor performs treatments outside of recommeded treatment guidelines and appears answerable to no one.
I've seen a death from this where standard treatment wasn't carried out, much to the horror of the last Oncologist the lady saw just prior to dying.
In public you can't chose your doctor and have to wait for non urgent surgery (orthopedics being the longest) but the health care is generally on par with private, unless you get a situation like the one mentioned above.
Public hospitals are generally better staffed and imo safer places in the case where something goes wrong (why I chose public for the birth of my children).
There are more differences, but they're less to do with healthcare.