Dr Rachel David discusses private maternity care on radio 6PR

A story we touched on this time last week was that private hospitals in Australia, we’re told, are on the verge of collapse as closures begin. Now, we are very well aware that there are thousands and thousands of people waiting for surgery in public hospitals at the moment for elective surgery, and our system is, fair to say, overstretched, but it is being flooded, we’re told, with private patients. There has been a whole bunch of private hospitals across Australia which have shut their doors or shut down mental health wards, like we had here in Perth at Bethesda in Cockburn. We had the two maternity wards of Saint John of God, one in Mount Lawley and one in Bunbury. And there is a belief that perhaps, in the next 5 to 10 years, in fact, there may be no more maternity services offered in private hospitals at all. Here’s a little of what Dr Michael Page, the president of the AMA here in WA, had to say about all of this when he joined me last Monday.

A bit of a chicken and egg situation there, Ollie. I mean, because the private health insurers are not funding certain services in the way that they previously have, people are then choosing to drop their private health insurance as a result. So, you know, and then of course, that puts the private health insurers in a bind if their membership is declining. So, it’s a bit of a cycle. But at the moment, the impression is certainly that the private health insurers need to do more to keep the private hospitals viable.

Dr Rachel David is the CEO of Private Healthcare Australia, and she joins me on Perth Live this afternoon. Dr David, thank you for your time.

Well, look, I think if you actually look at what the health funds have done, they’ve increased their payments to private hospitals by 11 per cent over the last year. And, really, we all understand that private hospitals, like every other business in Australia, have been knocked around by the pandemic and the lockdowns and the subsequent issues with inflation and the economy that have occurred. But I do take issue with this notion that the system is in a state of collapse. It really isn’t. Of the 72 hospitals I saw in the papers that apparently closed, 60 of them were small, doctor-owned day surgeries that closed as others opened. The remaining 12, seven of them are still open because other groups took them over, which left five which we were really concerned about. So five, all of which were in rural and regional areas.

Now, we know, as I said, that private hospitals are doing it tough, but some of the shroud-waving that we’ve seen is just scaring people, and it really is nonsense. There is no chance that the private health system is in a state of collapse as has been suggested.