The Australian Day Surgery Committee commenced as a working party to prepare the first guidelines on day surgery in 1981. As day surgery expanded, slowly at first, the activities of the working party increased and in 1988 its name was changed to the National Day Surgery Committee. There has been more rapid expansion of day surgery over the past 10 years, and in 1996 it became the Australian Day Surgery Council, which currently has representatives from 23 health care organisations.
Day surgery is carried out in both free standing and hospital based centres.
By the end of 1999 there were 190 free standing day surgery centres in Australia, most of them multidisciplinary with a small but increasing number of unidisciplinary centres. It also includes other important design features such as a community nurses centre and a pre-operative assessment clinic. The greatest challenge to the health care system in Australia, and other countries, is the escalating cost of technological advances, diagnostic and therapeutic, together with the costs of acute-bed hospital accommodation. It is obvious that only the largest hospitals can afford to provide all the complex expensive diagnostic technology, yet it is essential that it should be available to all levels of the Australian community. The large hospitals, generally of teaching hospital status, can offer these services, but only to a very small proportion of the population.