Health groups are calling for a territory budget targeted at keeping GP visits out of hospital emergency departments in the wake of dramatic federal health cuts laid out in the May budget.
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Medicare Local, which represents GPs, nurses, pharmacists and other consumer groups, says health funding needs to target primary care for the aged and mentally ill, to hit back at significant increases in visits from these groups to the ED.
The May budget saw the ACT become the only state or territory to have its health and hospital funding slashed in 2017-18 to below this year's figures, according to Health Minister Simon Corbell.
The ACT Labor government are expected to hand down their budget on June 4.
AMA ACT president Elizabeth Gallagher said the drop in ACT health funding with the end of the National Health Reform Agreement will hit waiting times and put more pressure on a system already under strain.
"As expected, the government has not done anything this year to address that [funding] shortfall," she said.
"Since the cost of health is continuing to increase as well as our aging population so unless funding can meet needs it's going to mean cuts in services and cuts in quality of care.
Dr Gallagher said surgical waiting list times, which for category two patients increased in the last 12 months, could potentially be affected.
"If there is no meat in the budget then we are not going to be able to improve these," she said.
ACT Medicare Local Chief Executive Officer Vlad Aleksandric said ACT health funding allocations needed to take into account "significant increases in presentations to the ED".
"Mental health is a big priority, and we know it is also for ACT Health as that they have some significant waiting lists in terms of acute mental health services," he said.
"We have been identifying some significant gaps in mental health services and for some of those services it's the general lack of specialists particularly psychiatrists, but others are more generalised support such as psychologists," he said.
Mr Aleksandric said aged care and palliative care needed more attention with presentations to the ED on the rise.
"Some of trends seem to be that the 85-year-old-plus cohort is starting to have significant increased visits to the ED department so we need to look at how we can best support the elderly in the community through primary health care," he said.
"While the ACT has a pretty good palliative care model, again there is always room for improving the resources that are provided particularly for community palliative care which is critically important."
