Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will meet state and territory leaders to discuss a plan to overhaul Australia's health care system as costs for governments continue to rise.
Mr Albanese is expected to face calls from premiers and chief ministers for the federal government to increase its financial contribution to health services when he informally meets them on Thursday night and national cabinet convenes in Canberra on Friday.
A Productivity Commission report released on Thursday showed total recurrent spending was $132 billion, with public hospitals receiving the lion's share in 2020/21 at nearly $82 billion.
This was followed by $45.8 billion for primary and community health and $4.9 billion for ambulance services. These sectors were the most common entry points to the health system.
The prime minister wants the primary health care and hospital systems to interact better to help lighten loads on emergency departments.
On Wednesday he joined Health Minister Mark Butler to announce a plan to establish seven Medicare urgent care clinics in West Australia, three of which will be opened by July.
Mr Albanese said the clinics were a "common sense solution" to some of the challenges in the Medicare system, including long wait times in emergency departments.
"We need to have a better way of engaging primary health care that the Commonwealth has responsibility for, with the hospital sector that's a responsibility primarily of the states," he said in Perth.
"We can work better together."
Opposition spokeswoman Anne Ruston said the announcement was well short of the 50 clinics promised by Labor before the 2022 federal election.
"(This) leaves our hard-working and under-pressure hospital and healthcare staff in an ongoing state of complete uncertainty," she said.
The Productivity Commission report found nurses and midwives made up the largest group of full time health workers followed by allied health practitioners and medical practitioners.
Medical practitioners had the highest proportion of the workforce aged 60 years or older at 15.5 per cent, while allied health practitioners had the highest aged under 30 years at 26.6 per cent.
A report from the Medicare task force will be considered by leaders at Friday's meeting.
Mr Butler said the task force was looking at how to increase the numbers of general practitioners, nurses and doctors in the health care system.
"It's something we're grappling with across the healthcare system, but it doesn't mean we're just simply going to sit on our hands and not proceed with a model we know is going to relieve pressures," he said.
The Productivity Commission report revealed the most common causes of death among Australians in 2021 were cancers and circulatory system diseases such as heart attacks and strokes.
Life expectancy for men is 81.3 years and 85.4 years for women, but for Indigenous Australians it is considerably lower. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men have a life expectancy of 71.6 years and for women it is 75.6 years.
