Private Health CEO Forum 'a sham process'

The Federal Government's new Private Health CEO Forum is "a dud" that will not deliver much-needed action before next year's election, Australian Private Hospitals Association (APHA) CEO Brett Heffernan says.

Health Minister Mark Butler proposed the meeting of industry leaders for further discussions following the long-awaited Private Hospital Health Check report delivered in November 2024.

The Forum is supposed to address the imbalance of health insurers' record profits and private hospitals' increasing battle to stay afloat amid soaring costs.

"After two years of dithering, private hospitals will get more of the same for the foreseeable future from the Albanese Government," Mr Heffernan said.

"The time for talk has long since passed. What private hospitals need to remain open is immediate action.

"As for the piecemeal measures flagged for discussion over the months ahead, none – even collectively – will stop more hospitals from closing.

"That no decisions are even countenanced until after the next election speaks volumes to the government's indifference to patients, hospital employees and the communities they serve."

Mr Heffernan said the Minister and his Department had been briefed on the health insurance industry's $3 billion shortfall in meeting the costs of hospital treatments, while banking over $5 billion in record profits.

"Under Minister Butler, the insurance companies have been able to gouge both ends of the spectrum – their members through phoenix policies and hospitals via underpayments," he said.

"The Minister's much-touted Private Hospital Health Check was delayed by three months, delivering nothing but another gabfest. The agenda for that discussion poses no decision point for another six months.

"And the Forum may not meet again pre-election. While the second meeting is pushed off until March 2025, caretaker conventions could see the Forum suspended before then.

"It's a sham process designed to get a government to an election without actually doing anything."

APHA CEO Brett Heffernan

While public hospital waiting lists for surgery continue to grow, almost 20 private hospitals have shut and more than 70 services in other private hospitals have been abandoned.

Mr Heffernan said APHA had proposed solutions to the government to prevent more hospitals from closing that would not cost patients or the taxpayer anything.

These include mandating 88 cents in the dollar from insurers via their premium windfalls to hospital care or redirecting funds from the rebates on health insurance to meet hospital costs.

"It is clear the Minister has zero interest in fixing the snowballing crisis in hospitals across his portfolio, seemingly hoping no-one will notice until after the next election," Mr Heffernan said.

"For example, the Forum agenda item of lifting the moratorium on overseas-trained psychiatrists is a practical step the APHA has asked of the government for two years. It could have been done then. It could be done today. Why wait another six months?

"It is unbelievable for a government that acknowledges psychiatric hospitals as a priority area, has overseen the explosion of need for psychiatric care and, most desperately, at the acute end with public mental health units at crisis and overflowing, would not get on and address the moratorium.

"It would have a direct and immediate effect of seeing patients admitted to private inpatient units and receive the care they urgently need."

Mr Heffernan said the Forum was a seriously-flawed concept because it focused on the big hospital groups accounting for 60 percent of revenue, excluding over two-thirds of private facilities.

"The government has shut out every small, medium and large independent hospital, as well as the stand-alone specialty psychiatric and rehabilitation hospitals," he said.

"To be clear, the big groups should be at the table. It would be odd if they were not. But what may work for a big hospital group will almost certainly fail the needs of the other 72.2 percent of private hospital facilities.

"It's either an act of sheer ineptitude or wilful sabotage that these hospitals are not represented at all. To deny a voice to the smaller., independent hospitals is a very odd play for a Labor Government. Let alone cutting out of the discussion the very hospitals at greatest risk of closing."

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