Two in five patients are still not being seen on time in Canberra emergency departments, despite the ACT government almost tripling its spending on public hospitals in the past 10 years.
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The latest data from the Productivity Commission's Report on Government Services shows while the territory government spent $587 million on public hospital services in 2006-7, that blew out to a whopping $1.47 billion in 2015-16.
The ACT by far spent the most on public hospitals per person in the country ($3674.90), ahead of the Northern Territory ($3618.10), Western Australia ($3473.70), Tasmania ($2564.10), Queensland ($2525.40), NSW ($2490.20), South Australia ($2284.30 ) and Victoria ($2218.50).
The average cost per acute emergency department emission in the ACT was $1461, far higher than Tasmania ($1257), Western Australia ($1227), NSW ($965), Queensland ($942), South Australia ($908), Victoria ($907) and the Northern Territory ($892).
But only the Northern Territory fared worse when it came to the proportion of patients being seen on time.
Overall 62 per cent of people were seen within the recommended time frames in the ACT in 2016-17.
While this was an improvement from the 58 per cent seen on time in 2007-8, it still lagged behind NSW (81 per cent), Victoria (73 per cent), Queensland (69 per cent), Tasmania (65 per cent) and South and Western Australia (64 per cent).
The ACT was the only state or territory where not all patients who required resuscitation were seen immediately (99 per cent in the ACT versus 100 per cent everywhere else).
It slid backwards in seeing emergency patients within the recommended 10 minutes of presentation (77 per cent of patients were seen in this window in 2016-17, compared with 78 per cent in 2014-15 and 83 per cent in 2013-14).
Of urgent patients, the ACT saw 50 per cent within the recommended 30 minutes, the lowest proportion in the country alongside Western Australia.
The territory made gains with patients who needed semi-urgent care - 63 per cent within the recommended hour, up from 53 per cent in 2014-15.
The ACT also greatly improved its ranking for seeing non-urgent patients within the recommended two-hour window, up from 86 per cent in 2014-15 to 91 per cent in 2016-17.
In a statement, Health Minister Meegan Fitzharris said while there were areas the government could improve on, "we are heading in the right direction".
She pointed to the increasing bulk billing rate and number of GPs, as well as $443 million in new health investment in last year's budget.
But key numbers are still missing from the Productivity Commission's latest report because of ACT Health's data debacles.
Data was not submitted on emergency departments or elective surgery times for 2015-16 because of systemic problems with the way it was collected and collated.
A spokeswoman said the system-wide review of data collection Ms Fitzharris ordered last year would be handed down by March 31, and all data from 2015-16 would be made available for the 2019 report.
But Canberra Liberals' health spokeswoman Vicki Dunne said the absence of data made it "impossible to truly know" where the health system was failing.
"This leaves patients in very vulnerable position," Mrs Dunne said.
The ACT spend per person is also skewed because it includes "substantial expenditures" for treating NSW patients, the report says.
This cross-border flow also affects the number of staff employed at Canberra's hospitals.
The number of full-time equivalent staff per 1000 of the population rose from 10.5 in 2006-7 to 18.7 in 2015-16.
This took the ACT from the jurisdiction with the second-lowest rate of staff per 100 people, to the state or territory with the highest rate of staff.
The number of nurses outstripped salaried medical staff by three-and-a-half times during the last reporting period, meaning the ACT went from having the third lowest rate of nurses in 2006-7 (5.2 full-time nurses per 1000 people) to the highest rate in 2015-16 (7.7 full-time nurses per 1000 people).
Again, the ACT figures are skewed as the ACT workforce "serves many residents of southern NSW in addition to ACT residents, while only ACT residents are captured in the denominator", the report said.
In a statement, Ms Fitzharris said the Canberra Hospital was" one of the top 10 busiest emergency departments in Australia", and a major tertiary centre for the ACT and southern NSW.
"This means a significant number of unwell NSW residents use its services," Ms Fitzharris said.
She said the performance of both ACT hospitals were "comparable to peer group hospitals in other jurisdictions".
"For example, the [Australian Institute of Health and Welfare] Emergency Department Care Report for 2016-17 found that 71 per cent of ED presentations to Canberra Hospital had a length of stay of less than four hours. This compared with 68 per cent nationally within the principal referral women's and children's hospital peer group," Ms Fitzharris said.
