The Federal Government is expected to unveil tonight which new health infrastructure projects it will fund. It announced at last year's Budget a $5-billion Health and Hospitals Fund that was to have doubled to $10-billion this year but the recession has put big question marks over those plans and the future of the initial down payment. Health lobby groups hope the Budget will reveal which of the more than 100 projects, like new hospitals and equipment, will get the Budget green light.

ASHLEY HALL: One of the few remaining unknowns about tonight's Budget is what will happen with funding for the public health system.

So fat the Government's kept quiet on its plans but there's still money sitting there from the last Budget waiting to be spent - close to $5-billion that was allocated for infrastructure projects like new hospitals

From Canberra, Emma Griffiths reports.

EMMA GRIFFITHS: Last year the health infrastructure fund was one of the shiniest jewels in the Budget crown.

Five billion dollars was put aside then for health facilities and equipment.

It was to have doubled to 10-billion this Budget but the recession has left big question marks over those plans and the future of the initial down payment.

The Government has recently announced that the fund would provide about half a billion dollars for two cancer treatment and research centres.

But the executive director of the Australian Health and Hospitals Association, Prue Power, knows of about 120 projects still waiting for news.

PRUE POWER: They're either new hospitals or upgrades to hospitals and new community health care facilities or upgrades to existing facilities and they may include equipment, 'cause we have got to remember that infrastructure is not just bricks and mortar but for information technology is a very important infrastructure.

EMMA GRIFFITHS: Prue Power is hoping for answers tonight. She says the process has already taken too long.

PRUE POWER: This money was committed in last year's Budget and we believe that the process should have been escalated and that some of these projects should have been up and running by now.

EMMA GRIFFITHS: The Government's called for proposals that could enhance staff training and integrate healthcare across rural, outer-metropolitan and Indigenous services.

It also wanted ideas for improving acute care facilities and it's that area that the Australian College of Emergency Medicine says is the most urgent.

President Sally McCarthy.

SALLY MCCARTHY: The greatest need is the need for emergency departments across the country to be able to move admitted patients into the acute hospital.

Currently 40 per cent of the workload of emergency departments on average is caring for patients who've finished their emergency phase of care and were those patients to be moved rapidly into in-patient units or through the hospital back out into the community, emergency departments would be able to provide a much better service to the public.

So way out as number one is moving admitted patients out of emergency.

EMMA GRIFFITHS: Sally McCarthy says the health Budget perennials of not enough staff and not enough beds still need to be addressed and they're always on the to-do list for the Australian Medical Association, too.

It's also hoping that this fund will pay for new equipment like MRIs and anaesthetic machines.

National president Rosanna Capolingua.

ROSANNA CAPOLINGUA: You hear stories across the country that the anaesthetic machines in some of the operating theatres are held together with sticky tape, masking tape and some blu-tac on occasion. You'd like to believe that's an exaggeration but I've heard the sticky tape story is true.

So equipment that is not as reliable as it should be causes a huge amount of anxiety and needs extra supervision by the doctors to make sure that their patients aren't being put at risk.

EMMA GRIFFITHS: The levels of anxiety and risk could be alleviated with new machines that cost about $90,000 a pop.

ASHLEY HALL: Emma Griffiths with that report.