The Australian hospital system is under extra pressure from the plague of methamphetamines, or, "Ice".  The drug has caused 150,000 additional visits to emergency departments in 2013 alone.

The longitudinal study involved researchers at Curtin University, University of New South Wales, University of Newcastle, and Monash University also found that ice accounted for between 28, 400 and 80, 900 additional psychiatric hospital admissions.

The authors wrote, "The dual impact on emergency departments and psychiatric hospitals is most likely because of a proportion of methamphetamine-related presentations involving methamphetamine psychosis."

When users are on drug, they tended to use non-acute health services like the GP, psychologists, and dentists; putting off normal visits meant that users waited until a simple matter became a health "crisis", going to emergency departments instead. 

"Increasing engagement with less expensive non-acute health services to provide improved long-term health care may reduce the costs attributable to methamphetamine use for acute care services," reads the report.  "Ensuring non-acute services are well equipped to respond to the needs of people who use methamphetamine is crucial to encourage people to access these services."