The public will be able to check the performance of local hospitals in areas such as patient infection rates and medication mistakes as well as monitor the Government's efforts on its pledge to improve indigenous health services.

The 70 accountability targets will also include publishing waiting times to see GPs and dentists by locality, the incidence of pressure ulcers in nursing homes and potentially avoidable patient deaths.

The increased scrutiny has been opposed previously by doctors and NSW Health, but advocates say publication of individual hospitals' performance in England and parts of the United States have resulted in improved safety and quality of services.

Expected to take effect from next July, the measures were agreed to as part of a $7.8 billion health care agreement, which will also require more rigorous costing of hospital services, particularly by poor performing states like NSW.

The weekend premiers' conference agreed to a total $15 billion injection of extra funding into schools, indigenous services, housing for the homeless, disability services and streamlining of business regulation.

The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, who hailed the agreement as one of the largest reforms of federal state relations in recent history, said of the big funding boost, "We can do so still while maintaining a modest surplus."

But the Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, acknowledged yesterday that the Government's $64 billion commitment to health funding over four years would not keep pace with health inflation, currently running at more than 9 per cent, the state governments say.

Ms Roxon said the indexation factor agreed to, 7.3 per cent, was a significant improvement on the 5.6 per cent allowed by the previous government.

"We had to be realistic about the economic circumstances," Ms Roxon said. "This is all about … stopping the drop that was occurring under the previous government and investing in other reforms."

Apart from $4.7 billion in extra base funding for public hospitals, the Rudd Government will also spend another $3 billion to boost health workforce training, step up preventive health programs and boost emergency departments.

The Government will spend $872 million over six years on programs designed to keep people out of hospitals, in what Ms Roxon says is the single largest investment in preventive health in Australia.

Reward payments will go to states which meet agreed targets, such as reducing hazardous drinking, increasing the proportion of children and adults with healthy body weights by 3 percentage points within 10 years and reducing smoking from 16.6 per cent to 10 per cent within 10 years.

The Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association, representing the public sector, welcomed the Commonwealth's plan but said it was disappointed it had not agreed to index funding at the 9 per cent annually required to keep pace with increasing hospital costs.

"Without this commitment, Australians cannot be confident that future governments will maintain the level of funding required to ensure that Australian public hospitals can continue to deliver world class health care," the association's president, David Panter, said.

The Opposition spokesman on the premiers' conference, Andrew Robb, dismissed the deal as a "huge missed opportunity" to unlock the billions of dollars locked up in private funds which could be invested in public infrastructure projects.