Private Health CEO Forum 2 setup to fail

LIKE most sequels the Federal Health Minister's Private Health CEO Forum 2 is a dud.

The Forum lacks substance, excludes over 70% of private hospitals – bizarrely those doing it toughest, poses no immediate solutions to the rolling viability crisis and tries to kick-the-can on any decision-making until after the next federal election.

It will do nothing to prevent further closures across the private hospitals sector, which accounts for 5 million patient admissions each year, 1.7 million surgeries including serious operations like hip and knee replacements, malignant breast cancer procedures, hysterectomies and eye surgeries.

Private hospitals also account for 1.6 million medical treatments each year, including the majority (54%) of chemotherapy. Across the country they employ 69,000 Australians, including 38,000 nurses.

"After two years of dithering, private hospitals will get more of the same for the foreseeable future from the Albanese Government," Brett Heffernan, CEO of the Australian Private Hospitals Association, said.

"Minister Butler's media statement tries to make a virtue of including the big hospital groups accounting for "60% of revenue". But the government has shut out every small, medium and large independent hospital, as well as the stand-alone specialty psychiatric and rehabilitation hospitals.

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

"It's either an act of sheer ineptitude or willful 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.

"Whatever the makeup of the Forum, 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.

"The Minister and his Department have been briefed on the health insurance industry's $3 billion shortfall in meeting the costs of hospital treatments. Over this same period, the health insurance industry has banked 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."

The table below shows the underpayments from health insurers to private hospitals growing year-on-year
under the Albanese Government.

"Hospitals have taken the unprecedented step of opening their financial records to the government to prove the point," Mr Heffernan added. "Despite being accepted as fact, the Minister has failed to provide a single solution to this ongoing crisis.

"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.

"We have proposed solutions to the government to prevent more hospitals from closing that do not cost patients or the taxpayer anything, including 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.

"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 incredulous 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.

"The losers from government inaction and further closures are the patients no longer able to access the care they need, having to change to other private hospitals further away or be added to ever-growing public hospital waiting lists, while hospital employees lose their jobs, and communities see much-needed local health options disappear.

"Occupying ministerial leather isn't about keeping your bum warm, it's supposed to be about getting things done. On this Minister's watch the Australian hospital system has been in freefall, with public waiting lists in the hundreds of thousands, almost 20 private hospitals closing their doors entirely and more than 70 services in other private hospitals abandoned.

"Australia's hospital system desperately needs a Health Minister and Federal Government who are on the job now."

-ENDS-

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