Opposition leader Jeremy Hanson used a budget estimates hearing this week to question the government about the cost and efficiency of the territory's hospitals, asking why the territory had the country's the most expensive and least efficient hospitals.

"Why have we reached a point after 15 years where this government is administering the least efficient hospital in Australia?"

A major report earlier this year revealed Canberra's two public hospitals are the most inefficient and expensive to run in Australia, with patients continuing to turn to emergency departments for care rather than GPs.

Health Minister Simon Corbell said there were a number of historical factors influencing the cost of delivering health care, such as staff costs, wages and superannuation, and those were likely to remain unchanged for some time.

"I find it sometimes a little bit frustrating because people assert that we're expensive and we are, but then people assert we need more beds or we need more doctors and nurses and we will always need some of those things," he said.

"But it's not just about buying more beds or buying more doctors or nurses, it's also about making sure the resources we have – the beds and the highly trained doctors and nurses – are able to see more people in a more efficient way because that reduces your cost per patient."

Increasing hospital activity and improving the use of existing capacity would help drive down the average cost per patient, Mr Corbell said.

"If we are utilising beds more efficiently, for example, if we are seeing more people moved through the emergency department in a timely way, then we're seeing more people with the same base capacity and therefore efficiency is improved and average cost goes down," he said.

But Mr Hanson questioned why the ACT Labor government had failed to solve the problem after so many years.

"What you're saying sounds reasonable looking ahead, but for 15 years now the reality is that under successive Labor health ministers we've reached this point where it's quite clear the utilisation of beds and staff, as you've described, is anything but efficient," he said.

Mr Corbell said reforms were being implemented to improve efficiency, timeliness and access to care.

"The fact that more people are being seen on time in our emergency department, that more people are getting their elective surgery and that less people are waiting longer than clinically indicated," he said.

"These are the outcomes that we need to achieve to address the issue around efficiency and the cost of providing hospital services."

The government was also moving towards implementing activity-based funding in hospitals.

"That will be a particularly important reform in driving efficiency and making sure that we move away from our current position in terms of the costs of providing hospital services and that's important for the long-term sustainability of health financing," he said.

Mr Corbell said better use of beds, improved processes and practices and a $100 million infrastructure investment over the next four years would result in improved capacity and efficiency throughout the health system.

"These reforms are changing how and where we deliver health services in the territory, and we are already seeing better access to more timely services including in emergency, elective surgery and medical imaging," he said.